


Time-Traveler

by ErisDea



Series: The Time-Traveler Arc [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Changing the game, F/M, Gen, Mind Control, Mind Games, Possession, The Avengers AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-05
Updated: 2013-07-11
Packaged: 2017-12-10 11:11:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 64,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/785397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ErisDea/pseuds/ErisDea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"And why do you offer to free me from this trap?" Loki asked.</p><p>She raised an eyebrow. "Why don't we skip the part where we pretend that you can't teleport yourself out of that cage anyway?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. from throwing the monkey wrench

**Author's Note:**

> 1) AU fic of the Avengers movie. Yeah, I embraced the cliché.  
> 2) Elements of time-travel and future-knowledge use.  
> 3) Rampant use of bad language. Children, if you don't want to learn how to curse like a motherfucker, leave this place and come back when you're ready.  
> 4) Heavy OC use, but I think you'll like her. Or at least, I hope you like her.  
> 5) For those who need to visualize an actual person doing all of this, in case you haven't seen the picture, Anna Stark/Lady Anna Thorsdóttir is portrayed by Nina Dobrev, who was picked by the program I wrote to spew out random actresses' names. (Well, Emma Stone technically won, but she's neither brown-haired nor brown-eyed. Multiple tries later, Nina Dobrev was the first actress I got from the program who could actually pass as Robert Downey Junior's kid.) So yeah, Nina Dobrev everyone! Applause!  
> Yes I'm open to suggestions and sure, throw in a bit of constructive criticism. Why not?  
> ~E

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The new cover art was scrapped together by me using other people's art. Because I can't draw, lol. Click on [Tony](http://amaterasuscorp1.deviantart.com/art/Tony-Stark-301874798), [Anna](http://pikulina21.deviantart.com/art/Katherine-Pierce-428758090), [Loki](http://clz.deviantart.com/art/Loki-Laufeyson-313459680) and [Thanos](http://geektyrant.com/news/2012/9/27/detailed-thanos-concept-art-from-the-avengers.html) to see the full original artworks.

****

**May 4, 2012**

"Director!" It's the alarm laced in his voice that has everyone turning to the blue-suited man who runs right up to Fury, and Tony sees the look of apprehension on his young-looking face that matches his panicked tone. "Director, someone's in the detention room with the prisoner!"

"Who?" Fury demands more than asks, and the little S.H.I.E.L.D. minion practically thrusts the tablet he's holding into Fury's face.

"No facial recognition matches, sir," the baby-faced minion reports, "and I mean  _total_  blackout. Not even a sixty-percent match on a single traffic cam  _anywhere_  on the planet."

"Send down a welcoming committee," Fury instructs as he turns, handing the tablet to Thor. "Recognize her?"

Thor grimaces and shakes his head. "Her image is not familiar to me," he replies, pushing away the thin device.

"Any idea what she could want with your brother?" Fury asks, taking the tablet back and returning it to What'shisname.

"No," Thor snaps irritably.

Fury's saved from a smiting via demigod by his dark-haired she-minion. "Sir, I've connected your line to the detention room," she says, tossing up the video link on the table for them all to see.

The unexpected visitor is a youngish, oddly familiar-looking girl with short, curly brown hair, and the quality of the video was good enough that Tony can see she actually has no makeup on, which is impressive, considering how pretty she looks on camera. She's decked in a S.H.I.E.L.D. uniform too, which  _would_  have meant she was part of the crew, except that she apparently didn't have a record of any sort, which all S.H.I.E.L.D. employees  _did_  have one way or another.

Not that Tony was supposed to know about such details.

So that meant she'd snuck on board and stolen a uniform. Trespassing and theft this late in the evening? How cliché of her.

The girl's voice echoes around the room as she spoke to Loki. "… _to free you,_ " she says, which made the S.H.I.E.L.D. people plus Cap and Point Break tense up. She-Minion begins barking orders into her headset, though Tony largely ignores her redundant commands in favor of listening to the more interesting conversation. " _How do I open the cage?"_

Interesting indeed. Why would she want to free Loki? Motive? Purpose? Was she one of his mind-controlled minions?

But no, her eyes aren't the blue color that Fury's initial reports mentioned. They were a nice brown color that…yeah, they look pretty familiar, now that Tony thinks about it…

Damn. Where'd he seen those eyes before—? Oh no, did he sleep with her once? Damn it, please don't be one of the women he's slept with before. Wait, Jarvis would know, wouldn't he?

" _There_." Loki raises his arm, pointing to the control panel at the end of the walkway, and the girl moves quickly to the mechanism. At the same time, Tony takes out his phone and begins texting his commands to Jarvis.

"Goddamn bullshit," Fury mutters, tapping on his comm. "Whoever you are, stop what you're doing at once," he snaps. "This is Director Fury of S.H.I.E.L.D. . Who the hell are you and what the fuck do you think you're doing?"

That seems to surprise Loki, and while Tony logically shouldn't trust anything the so-called God of Mischief did, gut-instinct tells him that this isn't part of whatever plan Loki has in place. " _You are not part of S.H.I.E.L.D._ ," Loki says, narrowing his eyes at her.

Tony blinks quickly as he registers Loki's distrustful tone and concludes that no, Loki  _really_  doesn't know her, so she couldn't be one of his people.

" _Nope_ ," the girl replies as she toys with the control panel.

Huh. So why was she here? And how did she know  _about_  Loki being here? She wasn't S.H.I.E.L.D., or else they'd have at least one record of her left in their system…

"She wouldn't know how to—" The guy who'd alerted them begins to say, just as on-screen, the impact sensors registering as  _DISENGAGED_. "Never mind," he mutters, hurriedly typing into his tablet, though for what Tony didn't know. It's not like he could stop the girl from freeing their newest prisoner, especially since the control panel couldn't be remotely accessed from outside the room.

Tony'd checked.

"The fuck does she think she's doing?" Fury asks no one in particular.

"She's freeing Loki!" Thor declares, as if everyone couldn't see it with their own eyes. "I must go!" And with that, the blond brute disappears through the doors.

" _And why do you offer to free me from this trap?"_  Loki asks as the clamps around the cage were disabled as well.

The girl raises an eyebrow and shoots him a smirk—one that  _again_  tugs at Tony's memory banks. " _Why don't we skip the part where we pretend that you can't teleport yourself out of that cage anyway?"_  she suggests, making most of S.H.I.E.L.D.—including Fury—cuss in some shape and form. Tony tries his best not to be amused at their panic, but fails as a smirk spread across his face. He himself had long ago realized that inside that cage, Loki was probably the safest bastard in the entire boat. Guess even highly-trained government drones were susceptible to stupid.

Or wishful thinking, anyway.

The door to the cage opens, and Fury's commands for his guards to hurry to their location are interspersed with 'fuck,' 'fucking,' and 'motherfucker'—all of which, despite the tense situation, were actually making Captain America's eyebrows rise in disapproval. Pfft! What a prude.

" _Very well then,_ " Loki says, disappearing from the middle of the cage and appearing right in front of the girl, grabbing her arms and pulling her close. The brunette was obviously not expecting this, because she gasps and stiffens in Loki's hold. " _ **Who**_   _are you, and why have you released me?"_

The girl suddenly does an impressive arm twist and drags Loki into a kiss.

Okay. Ew. "She let him out for  _that?"_  Tony expresses with a frown, watching as Loki pushed the girl off him. "I expected something more impressively awful—" And then, on the crystal clear screen, they watch as Loki crumples to his knees and howls, his skin turning blue as a purple gas was expelled from his throat. "Okay, sinister enough," Tony admits.

" _Oh mother_ _ **fucker** ,_" the girl snaps as she jerks back, obviously not expecting that reaction either.

" **You dare!** " A deep voice booms ominously from the speakers. " **Mortal scum! I will snuff the breath out of your body with my bare hands!** "

"Who the  _hell_ was that?" Fury demands rhetorically. At least, Tony  _thinks_  he's being rhetorical, 'cause it's clear by everyone's horrified and surprised expressions that  _no one_  had expected this turn of events, and therefore, no one knew what the hell was going on.

On screen, Loki drops on all fours, panting as the cloud thingy writhes above him and the girl. And then he looks up and extends a blue hand, magic glowing at his fingertips.

" **NO!** " the big voice roars as the smoke began to swirl, getting sucked into whatever Loki was doing. The girl moves back further, and that seems to catch the cloud's attention because it goes right for her.

Seriously? The voice was coming from that big cloud? Oh, no. Were they dealing with amorphous aliens now? Shit, that couldn't be a Chitauri, could it? Because if it was, then the Earth was  _fucked_.

The sight of the gassy blob going down the girl's throat seems to snap Fury out of his trance. "Hill, keep me updated," he says, turning to the door. "I'm going down there."

"Sir—"

"You think that's smart, Director?" the captain asks. "We—"

"I think I'm going get my damn answers," Fury barks testily, stomping past the doors.

 * * * * *

**July 4, 2035**

She's left unnoticed because of the rubble pinning her to the ground, and despite the hot, searing pain tearing through her chest, Anna forces herself to breathe lightly and play dead. She opts to keep her eyes open to watch the huge fucker who'd crashed her party and rudely killed and-or maimed everyone else in sight as he stomped through the felled elite of Manhattan and refused to spare the lives of her dying guests or give them a quick death.

"Why bother?" The purple-skinned asshole goes for a rhetorical on one of the dying blonde socialites, and the words don't sound any better even with the deep voice. "In the end, you will still die." Purple Motherfucker then makes his way out towards the balcony, following after the other creatures—a mix of humanoid and non-humanoid alien ass-clowns—intent on spreading destruction and carnage further out into the greater New York area. And when he's gone, Anna lets out the pained, angry cuss been boiling in her throat.

Because he's right. All around her, the people who came to celebrate the fourth of July, the company's hundred-and-first anniversary  _and_  welcome her back into the world of the rich and famous are either dead or dying, and she's  _part_  of the latter group. There's a slim rebar sticking blatantly out of her chest, and she hears— _feels_ —her spine grinding up and down against the unyielding ridges as she breathes. And every movement she makes floods her nerves with mind-shattering, eye-watering agony that makes her gasp involuntarily for air and pray for the strength to push the pain back. And with every breath she takes, her spine moves, the white pain blinds her senses, and the cycle repeats itself over and again.

Also, she can't feel her legs, but that's really just a secondary concern, because even though there's a large possibility that her kneecaps have been ground into tiny pieces, she can't feel it and so she doesn't care to be sure, especially since the damned rebar was adamant in keeping her full attention.

And god (-fucking-dammit-fuck- _shit-fuck!_ ) but it hurts. It  _burns_. Fire  _races_  through her and she couldn't cool down. Her nerves  _scream_  for relief and she opens her mouth in a breathless, silent cry for—

"Ohmygod." Her eyes roll back and a moan escapes her as a breeze-like sensation flutters over her skin and takes away some of the heat and pain.

Most of the heat and pain.

…all of the heat and pain?

Okay, what the fucking  _what?_

Eyes snapping open, she doesn't realize she'd automatically jerked up until she's jerking back, flinching away from the pain that was sure to come.

But it doesn't come, and it takes her a moment to register that she's no longer sandwiched between floor, broken wood platform and misplaced ceiling, nor was she still kebab'd by a long spike of ribbed metal.

...what the actual fuck was going on?

She pats herself down quickly, but there is no pain in her chest when she pokes at it, and when she stands, her knees brace, lock and hold her up with no problems or creaky complaints. She massages her scalp as well, looking for the lump she'd surely gained when the ceiling said hello to her head, but there's no sign of blood or a broken skull on her, nor does it feel like she has a concussion. So again, what—?

She blinks at her brace-covered hands, following the crisscrossing bands down her arms and to her body.

"What the fuck…?" she asks aloud, feeling the familiar fabric with her clean, bloodless hands and somehow, she's more shocked at the old Amazonian costume then her injuries' miraculous disappearance.

There's only one place she's ever worn this getup to—

 _"…Thor, please!," her mother's voice drifted up the stairs. " **Please!** "_

—and unless that cooling, pain-removing sensation means that she'd just died, then this couldn't be Asgard—the Realm Eternal, and home to her immortal surrogate uncle and adoptive father and his family, which unfortunately includes the most asshole king she's ever met.

_"Father, please! I gave her my word, and young Anna has nowhere else to go—"_

_"No!" The old king looked stressed at Thor's audacity to question his command. "The girl is a mortal, Thor—she cannot remain in our realm forever!"_

_"Then let her take a bite from Idun's apples at harvest time!" Thor pleaded. "We have granted immortality to men before!"_

_"You **will**  take her back—" Odin rumbled, and the warning in his voice resonated through her, forever etched into her memories, "—or I shall see to it myself."_

"The Lady Anna." Heart in throat, she whirls around, the leather skirt fanning around her as she moved to see who else was there in the almost-dark room with her. "We meet again."

…it's a naked man leaning back into a wall.

No, wait, that was wrong. Well, not the naked part anyway.

He wasn't leaning back at all. Metal encases his hands and pins him back into the jagged rocks, and his feet are similarly bound. His pelvis arches forward, almost obscenely thanks to his lack of pants, but she forgives him for it because even in this angle, she can see that he's only stretched out that way thanks to a piece of sharp rock that could tear into his back if he lets himself slouch even just a little bit.

She doesn't blame him for the pinched and displeased expression on his face—she'd had a rebar in her not a minute ago after all, and it had  _not_  been a pleasant experience.

But even if his skin was blue now—and not the unhealthy pale-white she'd first seen him as—and even if it  _has_  been six years since she'd last set foot on Asgard, Anna would never forget this place and the god it housed.

_" **Leave me** ," he roared, blue eyes swiftly turning red._

_She dropped the torch and screamed, running back quickly through the tunnel she'd come from._

"Loki." His name is exhaled past her lips as she realizes what her clothes and his presence meant: she was  _on_  Asgard. Which means—

 _Thor_. Her eyes glance to the left, where the torch she'd dropped years ago still lay alive and flickering and hallelujah for eternal fire!, and she's already stepping toward the passage she knew was there when she discovers that no, there is no opening there at all. Quickly coming up to it, she pats her hands against the cool cave walls frantically, looking for an opening or—

"There's no way out." Her gaze cuts right up to the bound god, and it occurs to her that the fucker has probably hidden it using the magic she knows he had. After all, she doesn't need three guesses to know who brought her here and how he'd done it.

Huffing, she picks up the torch and makes her way back to him. "Let me out, Loki."

Loki's lips thin visibly, his red eyes narrowing at her. "Don't be hasty in your suspicions, mortal. It was you who caused the tunnels to be filled in, not I."

_"Your Anna was in the caves." Odin was obviously unhappy at that. "You know Loki isn't to be visited by anyone else—"_

_"The little lady was just playing, Father." Thor sank his large fingers through her curls, resting his hand at the nape of her neck comfortingly. "She knew not that he was there. Anna meant no harm or disrespect."_

_"It is no longer of any consequence." The king turned and began walking away. "I have taken care of the matter."_

…oh  _damn_. So that's what the old coot had meant. Shit.

"Then how do I get out?" Because she knows that she'd get nowhere without magical help, and despite her reservations, Loki is her best shot at getting out of the caves and requesting help from either Asgard's asshole king or its crowned prince. And on second thought, she should just probably go straight to the one who  _would_  help her, Asgardian law and culture be damned. "I need to talk to Thor."

Loki sighs. "You cannot speak with him as you are not on Asgard."

"Aren't I?" She puts challenge in her voice, but if his goal was to plant doubt in her mind, then he was successful. "You should be on Asgard, so—"

"And I am," he interrupts her imperiously, "just as you are still on Midgard. In your current situation, however—" he rakes his gaze over her critically, which was just wrong because  _he's_  the one chained naked to a spiky rock, "—your mind and body are rupturing. This is how I am able to… _meet_ ," he chooses to say, "with you."

She understands what he's insinuating at once. She's dead—or maybe still dying, which is basically the same thing—and he connected with her mind or essence or whatever. And since she's already in the presence of the god…

"Wow," is all she can say, her thoughts racing over the powers she was told Loki had in lieu of thinking about her nearing end. "So are you like, the god of death too or something? Come to fetch me and bring me…" she waves the torch absently, "wherever?"

It's a fifty-fifty chance that Loki would either laugh or scoff at her idea. He settles for a snort, and it's more insulting than either scenario she imagined. "I've no rule over the dead. But in a way, you are correct."  _I knew it_ , she thinks. "I come to bring you elsewhere. However, I don't offer death."

Her eyes narrow in suspicion, because there is  _no way_  Loki would put an offer like that—or any offer, really—on the table without wanting something in return. And that something probably danced along the lines of either her soul or her first-born child. Not that she even has the latter option right now. Or  _yet_ , anyway. "And what exactly  _do_  you offer, Loki—god of mischief and deceit?"

Instead of being insulted, Loki seems happy with what she'd called him. "No one," he tells her, "has ever described be so accurately before, my lady. I'm pleased."

Something inside her shifts at the title. "I'm  _not_  your lady." And yeah, she's angry enough that she doesn't care she's getting testy with the god who tried to rule her planet before she was even conceived. "Now what—"

"That's not what I've heard." The desire to smack him for the twinkle twinkling ridiculously away in his eye seizes her. "My brother placed claim on you as his ward, did he not?"

_"Father." Uncle Thor kneeled before looking up to the king. Not knowing what else to do, Anna kneeled too, but felt awkward about looking up and kept her head down instead. "I bid you to give blessing to my plea. Allow Anna Stark to take refuge on Asgard as a lady of the court."_

_"A lady?" There was something in Odin's voice that had her looking up anyway. "On what grounds does Anna Stark claim her ladyship?"_

_Thor pressed his lips together before speaking. "I claim it for her," he clarified, "as my ward and daughter."_

She grits her teeth at the reminder. "That was a  _long_  time ago."

"Oh, it's been a  _long_  time since, has it?" Loki smiles mildly. "And here I thought it has only been but half a decade. My, how the days pass so quickly. Forgive me,  _Lady Thorsdóttir_ —I've no true concept of time in this…hovel."

Anger blazes through her veins at his deliberate provocation. "Looks more like a cave than a hovel," she hisses. "Hovels have furniture."

"Indeed?" The bastard has the nerve to look thrilled at her reaction. "I wonder how you can state such a comparison. I'll defer to your expertise, of course," he adds, a smug, knowing smile on his face.

She finally snaps, reaching the end of her limit. "The  _fuck_  do you want?" Because she's had it up to  _here_  with these alien assholes and she's angry enough to gladly kill every single one of them, starting with this blue fucker. "You didn't just call me from my death bed to be all coy and confusing, did you? 'cause if you did, magic god or not, I will punch your blue bitch-face and break your fucking blue nose."

Loki frowns then. "You're quite vulgar for a lady of the court," he says, sounding a bit confused. "And you really should be thanking me. No mortal has ever had an opportunity like this at all. I  _should_  smite you for such insolence."

She snorts with just as much derision as he did earlier, because she's just realized what Loki was doing. "Should," she agrees, calming down as she thought about why he was trying to piss her off, "but you won't." Tucking her right arm under her breasts and holding the lit-end of the torch away from her body, she props her left elbow on her knuckles and rests the pads of her fingers on her chin, considering him. "You need me for something," she states, "something only I can do for some reason, because otherwise, you'd have magicked someone else here. You're also conserving magic or else you wouldn't be blue, so whatever it is you want, it involves using magic on me. You're riling me up because you think I'll agree to it if I'm angry enough, so this is probably about the cock-suckers who crashed my party with their supreme overlord."

Loki gapes at her for a moment before laughing delightedly. "Indeed," Loki jerks his head slightly in acknowledgement, a content smile playing on his lips. "You're more perceptive than I expected." She's not sure if she's insulted or pleased at his admission. "But I digress," he adds. "Hear me, mortal. Thanos—"

Her mouth drops open exaggeratedly. "Did you just seriously say that?"

" _Listen now_ ," he snaps, dropping the casual act. "Thanos has invaded your pitiful realm to call forth Thor. He plans to use Thor's descent into Midgard to take the Tesseract."

"Okay, there is seriously something wrong with that statement." She relishes the sudden anger that makes his nostrils flare as he inhales sharply. Payback was a bitch indeed. "The Tesseract is here on Asgard, he can't just get  _take it_  like candy from a—"

Loki hisses. " _Which_  is why he wishes to lure Thor to Earth! With him away, no one but Odin can stand against him, and the Allfather grows weaker by the day. He would not last against the Mad Titan."

Anna frowns, considering this new information. Thor hadn't mentioned Odin the last time they met, and she'd been glad for it then. But if Loki was right... "Wait," she blinks, "what does he need the Tesseract  _for?"_  she asks.

"That is a long story—"

"Then give me the cliff notes version," she interrupts snappily. "You're all half-truths and sly words, Loki. If you think I've forgotten that I'm dying, then you're an idiot—" and here, Loki raises his eyebrows, as if he  _had_  thought she'd forgotten, "—and magic fuckery or not, I can't have too much time left. You want my help?" she asks rhetorically. "Fine. But if there's one thing I've been taught to do, it's not to go into dangerous situations blind and half-cocked. You either tell me  _everything_ , or just let me die in peace." She shrugs. "Your choice, Grouchy Smurf."

"You wish to die?" he asks, and it's clear that both the nickname and its meaning go right over his head, because he's an Asgardian psychopath who spent something like a day trying to subjugate modern Earth. Too bad, that was actually a good shot, and when else could she have use the term? God, what a waste of witticism.

 _Focus, Anna_ , she reminds herself, and she squints at him unhappily at the obvious topic change. "Death is inevitable for me," she chooses to say. "I can't choose when or how I die—that's out of my hands. And you're not offering me an out, you're offering an extension. Not even the great Loki Odinson can give me immortality."

Loki flinches. "I'm  _not_  Odin's son," he says hotly, and he visibly has to calm himself down. "And indeed, you are dying, but if my 'magical fuckery,'" he quotes sardonically, "is powerful enough to heal you completely," and here, her heart leaps to her throat in surprise, "then it's powerful enough to suspend time. We're in an in-between, and while I can't keep hold on this spell for too long, I  _can_  hold it long enough to… _explain_  things—" he wrinkles his nose at the idea, "—to you. And yes, I cannot and do not offer you immortality. I am," he adds, "however, offering you a second chance."

She immediately shifts her attention to that, arms crossing under her breasts as she feels that they've  _finally_  gotten to the heart of the subject. "So you want to heal me so I can kill Thanos."

A shout of laughter escapes him. "Oh no," he refutes, chuckling at her. "No. Even if my brother himself had trained you extensively, you'd have no hope of winning against  _him_. Thanos has had centuries to perfect his trade. You wouldn't last ten seconds against him."

"Ouch," she says dryly, but thinks that he's probably right. Even after the training she'd been through in the past few years, her best show and tell talent was escape and evade, not combat fighting. "Okay, fine. If I'm not killing him, then what am I doing?"

Loki smiles, devious and satisfied. "You're going to change everything."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Thorsdóttir** : This is an Icelandic practice, where the father (or mother, if the father is not known or places no claim on the child) passes their name down to their offspring as a surname. So when Loki tags Anna with the surname Thorsdóttir, he's calling her "Thor's daughter." See Wikipedia or Google it.


	2. to feeling fate's bite

_"Are you ready then, Lady Anna?" The not-blue-skinned Loki-double stepped into her personal space, and Anna leaned back because fuck, this guy was **tall**._

_She nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, I think so."_

_He chuckled darkly, green eyes glinting knowingly down at her. "Liar," he murmured, then presses his lips against hers._

_Their lips literally sparked, and Anna tried to pull back in alarm, but Loki moved his hand up to keep them together. It seems like forever until he removed his hand and pulled away, and by then, the doppelganger seemed to be fading._

_Then Loki started chanting and Anna's body started to glow. She lifted her hands up to get a closer look, but that triggered an ache in her muscles that hadn't been there before. She grunted when her skin began to prickle, then groaned when her bones suddenly felt like they were melting._

_And then something latched tightly onto her arm and **pulled** —_

* * * * *

When Anna wakes up, the unfamiliar surroundings disorient her for a few moments. And then, after asking herself what the hell she was doing on the floor of what looks like a utility closet, she remembers everything. Groaning, she gives up on the idea of moving when none of her four limbs, ten fingers or ten toes twitch at all on her command, and she stares up at the bland-grey ceiling while taking stock of herself, trying to confirm that she still had all the body parts a human needed.

She did. She just couldn't move them yet. This is probably what Loki meant when he said to 'gather her bearings.' Asshole. Why couldn't he just tell her what was going to happen?

She groans again, because there was a strong possibility that her hair is standing on end, if the mess she could slightly see was any indication. But it honestly matters less over the sizzling, prickly sensation dancing on her skin, thanks to the leftover magical mojo that still clung to her. Not to mention the insane way her mind is racing to process everything  _extra_ Loki seems to have included in the ah,  _travel packet_ , because her brain is mapping out a plan without really asking for her input.

Damned God of Mischief.

Ugh, in any case, it was probably for the best that she arrived in a closet, because those extra uniforms neatly folded on one shelf will probably help her blend in more than the Asgardian she-warrior costume Loki dressed her…in.

…where  _the fuck_  are her clothes?

It's right after she realizes that she's naked that that her mind catches up with her body, and the utter wrongness of how she'd just traveled courses through her with fierce suddenness that she blindly turns herself over and heaves.

Then, as if to make matters just a little worse, there's pain in her chest too—as if her rebar injury were ghosting through her still, haunting her every move.

God. Fuck.  _Ugh_.

She pants, trying to keep the panic down as she pushes herself up, soiling her bared knee when it lands in her own bile after she executes an uncoordinated series of actions in her attempt to stand.

'Gross,' Anna thinks, grimacing at the ick factor, 'and  _totally_  unnecessary.'

Not to mention that her lack of clothing is completely and undoubtedly inappropriate for what she came here to do.

A soft bark of laughter escapes her when she remembers what her mission was. Change the future— _son of a bitch_ , the  _fuck_ had she agreed to that?

Refusing to stay naked for too long, Anna reaches for a uniform set from the nearest rack—

"Oh my god," she breathes, freezing in place as she catches sight of the ugly handprint that covers her right forearm. Gingerly touching the pinkish-brown discoloration etched on her skin, she notices that the finger-marks are long and spidery and wonders if Loki had been the one to pull her through…whatever that glowing thingy was.

'It was probably Loki,' she tells herself, because to think otherwise would mean an unscheduled freak out. So she files the thought away and reaches out for the uniform again, ignoring the way her hands shook as her body, mind and soul tried to recover from the unconventional travel.

She's got the uniform top zipped up all the way to her neck before she realizes  _she can't wear pants while her knees are disgustingly wet!_  Luckily though, there's rubbing alcohol in the third shelf when she searches for something to clean up with, thank fuck, and she uses a generous amount to wash off the puke from her knee before pulling the large-ass pants on. Then she cleans up the mess she's made with a yellow absorbent rag because she  _really_  needs to get a grip before leaving the room and she's heard before that there's nothing like a good scrubbing to help detach the mind from a traumatic experience.

But like most things, cleaning does nothing for her nerves.

'Loki was right,' she thinks, wiping the rag harder into the already newly-cleaned floor. She's  _not_  ready. Not for this. Not for…for heroes and save-the-world gigs.

This was…this was an  _Avengers_  thing. Not an Anna thing.

She was a coward. A victim, not a hero.

God. Stupid Loki.

No. Stupid her, agreeing to do shit and fuck.

A motherfucking idiot—that's what she was.

The sound of beeping froze her entirely, and the door was suddenly opening. God, please no, she's not fucking ready—

_"There is no ready!" She startled at his raised voice, taking several steps back before she can even comprehend she'd moved. Barton's expression darkened at her movement. "There was a time when Anna Stark could get herself out of trouble. What the hell happened to that girl, huh?"_

Her mind blanks out, and she's in motion by the time the door opens completely, reaching out and catching blue flexi-steel fabric in her hand as someone takes a step inside. The intruder is pulled in before they can scream or react in any way, and using their— _her_ —momentum, Anna's elbow collides with her jaw, dropping the stunned but conscious blonde to the ground. Bare foot meets cheek, and the agent is instantly out cold.

When the adrenaline rush fades, Anna swallows and takes in her handy work. Part of her is horrified at attacking an unprepared woman, but the other half—the one that's been through too much shit thanks to the life she's lived and the six years of constant and almost-brutal conditioning for her until-now untried reflexes—is pleased at how well she'd handled herself.

'Shoes,' she thinks as the heel of her foot stung slightly. 'I need shoes.'

Turning to the uniform racks first, she sees that the ones there are too big for her, and with a grimace, her stare drops down to the woman's boots.

Then she takes a good look at the woman's clothes, glances down at her own, and realizes that yeah, she's wearing men's clothes. Because that wouldn't be conspicuous at all, right?

Anna begins stripping the woman of her outer uniform, resigning herself to the decision of theft largely due to the fact that she has to detach herself from the emotional aspect of it all. Because the time-traveling, the almost dying, the truths she was now privy to—they were part of the mission, and Clint had  _drilled_ it into her head that there has to be a certain level of disconnection going on. Because if she takes things to heart…

On the other hand, this  _is_  personal. She's not just here to save Loki, she's here to make sure her family stays  _whole_ —something she has never seen it become.

But still, a part of her whispers with doubt. The task Loki asked her to do is just too big for her alone—too  _complex_  and fucking hell, what  _had_  she agreed to? Clint had warned her every time after her reunions with Thor that Loki was bad with a capital B, so why the fuck did she go and make a deal with the devil?

God, she could be so  _stupid_  sometimes.

Zipping the boots up, she covers the woman with the large top and is halfway out the door before remembering what she'd forgotten. Plucking the woman's headset off, she wipes the earpiece self-consciously before slipping it into her ear. And then she stares at the gun she'd abandoned on the floor

Anna hates guns. Her life had fallen apart because of guns. She hates them  _so fucking much_ , but…

But yeah.

She takes the holster, clipping the belt around her waist and then securing the bottom straps around her thigh. The gun feels heavy with danger and potential misuse, but she keeps it on and leaves the room with the look of an authentic S.H.I.E.L.D. agent.

The halls of the Helicarrier shouldn't be quiet, but barring the hum of technology and electricity, it is. She's lucky she landed in a utility closet—or maybe that'd been Loki's aim all along—because at least she managed to get her hands on the proper camouflage. But as she strolls down the hall, Anna finds another mistake she's made.

She has no idea where she is.

Son of a  _bitch_ , how many more mistakes is she going to make?

'Wish I had J.A.R.V.I.S.,' she thinks, because he really did make everything look easy. But she'd been upgrading the necklace J.A.R.V.I.S. was stored in before everything went FUBAR on her and had left it in the workshop so that J.A.R.V.I.S. could upload himself back into it and finish by the time the party ended. And besides, she'd arrived here naked, so maybe he wouldn't have come with her anyway.

Fuck.

Fine. Fine. She could totally do this. Totally. She could hack into the facility's internal databanks and get what she needed without anyone being the wiser.

She  _could_.

But first—she needed a computer.

It takes Anna a few minutes of wandering around to find a room with a computer, and then another ten minutes to find another room with a computer without anyone else in it. The S.H.I.E.L.D. logo spun absently on-screen before she accessed it, and with a bit of guilt, she carefully hacks into their mainframe and pulls up a map. Finding the detention room, she memorizes the way there before closing the map.

She's typing in a line of code that would erase her tracks when she sees it.  _Security feeds_ , the link says, and it completely captures her attention.

It's not that Anna doesn't think about what she's doing—it's that she processes subconscious thoughts and reasonings faster than her conscious mind can thoroughly dissect them. So when she clicks on the link, it's not that she does it unthinkingly. Because consciously or not, she knew— _knows_ —what she would find there.

Uncle Thor's centuries of story-telling had refined that specific talent of his, and even as a little girl, the Avengers' first battle had always been a favorite of hers. She's heard it many,  _many_  times in her life, so she knows that right now, five-sixths of the team would be in the briefing room.

And she's right.

Uncle Steve and a redhead Anna recognizes as her dead godmother Natasha Romanoff are sitting far apart at the table while both Uncle Thor and Uncle Bruce stand opposite each other. Which leaves…

Her father.

Tony Stark struts into the room with an arrogance that she recognizes in herself, his feet taking him to what looks like a control hub. He pats Uncle Thor's arm condescendingly when he walks past the god, a faux good-natured smile on his face, and a lump forms in Anna's throat as she turns on the audio just in time to hear him say, " _That man is playing Galaga!"_ while pointing at something off-screen. " _Thought we wouldn't notice. But we did,_ " he adds as he drops his hand, only to raise the other to cover his left eye. " _How does Fury even see these?"_ he asks, turning to a dark-haired woman that Anna—with a start—recognizes as a younger Maria Hill.

" _He turns,_ " Agent Hill replies dryly.

" _Sounds exhausting,_ " her father snarks. That part hadn't been in any of the stories she'd been told, and it startles Anna into a giggle. God, now she knows what her mother meant about her being too much like her father, who had begun to fiddle with the control panels around the raised floor. " _The rest of the raw materials,_ " he says with all the air of someone continuing an earlier discussion, " _Agent Barton can get his hands on pretty easily_ —"

And with those words, Anna remembers what she's here for. Watching for just another few moments while her father not-so-subtly brags about learning something new and intricate in only one night, Anna swallows heavily and closes the feed, inhaling deeply before finishing up the code that would erase her tracks. A few minutes later, she was out of the room and heading towards the detention level.

'You can do this,' she thinks to herself all the way to her destination. 'You can. You can. You can.'

_"You shouldn't have offered if you didn't know you can do it," Clint said, easily holding onto his jug and keeping his pace with her while her back and arms ached in her struggle to carry her gallon of water back to his little seaside safe house. "Always know your limits. Never offer or agree to do something you don't know you can do."_

Goddamn, why the fuck had she agreed to this?

_"I wish you could've met him, baby," her mother murmured as they stared at the golden plaque bearing her father's name. "I wish he could've met you."_

Her mantra changes. 'You  _can_  do this. And you will.'

There are no guards posted at the outer doors when she reaches the detention room, which is weird but convenient for her, so she waltzes right in, faking confidence in a way she never had to before.

Loki, dressed in the fashion she knew Asgardians preferred, is pacing in the large circular cage and doesn't seem to notice her at first. So she makes noise, stomping obnoxiously along the metal grates as she walks up to the cage holding him captive. His head turns to look at her, unwittingly allowing her to see his eyes, which were more blue than the green she'd seen from his future-self's non-blue-skinned doppelganger, and so Anna sees for herself that Loki had told her the truth.

Mind-control. Jesus.

Loki eyes her speculatively as a voice shouts through the comm, loudly calling a familiar title. "I admit I wasn't expecting any company just yet," Loki says. "And who might  _you_  be?" It's an almost perfect Loki-drawl, except that there's a difference in his inflections and emotions.

The real Loki doesn't broadcast his contempt through his words when he spoke, but through his actions. Even tied up and stretched out as he had been, Anna had noticed it, having been with Loki long enough to know how he moved when he…spoke.

'Son of a bitch,' she thinks half-fondly. 'Bastard trained me to  _recognize_  him.'

"Here to free you." That earns his surprise, and somehow, the visible astonishment on his face reassures and calms her frayed nerves, even as the buzz of alarm grows frantically in her ear. "How do I open the cage?"

It takes him a moment to reply, and the way he stands gives away none of his thoughts. But if it were Anna, she'd be thinking, assessing how this surprise visitor's presence and apparent willingness to help her escape would affect her plans.

Finally— "There." He points to a slim panel behind her, and Anna retraces her steps to take a look at the mechanism. It was actually pretty simply enough to operate, and she quickly discovers how to—

" _Whoever you are, stop what you're doing at once,_ " an annoyed voice echoes around the room. " _This is Director Fury of S.H.I.E.L.D. Who the fuck are you and what the fuck do you think you're doing?"_

"You are not part of S.H.I.E.L.D.," Loki states from his cage.

"Nope," Anna replies as she enters the sequence that disengages the impact sensors.

"And why do you offer to free me from this trap?" he asks as the mechanisms around the cage hisses.

Anna raises an eyebrow. "Why don't we skip the part where we pretend that you can't teleport yourself out of that cage anyway?" she offers, pushing the button that opens the door. Fury swears impressively in her ear and commands his guards to hurry to their location. Anna estimates that she had a minute—at the very most—before they arrive, so she meets Loki half-way as he smiles at her from his position in the middle of the cage.

"Very well then," Loki agrees, suddenly teleporting right in front of her. He grabs her arms tightly and pulls her flush against him, making her gasp in shock at the sudden movement. _"Who_  are you, and why have you released me?"

_"Get close, transfer my magic, and the spell will do the rest," Loki told her._

Anna recovers from her surprise and twists her arm around to reach up for his collar. "For this," she says, pulling him down to her.

_She narrowed her eyes at him. "What. The **fuck**?"_

_Loki sighed. "Most spells that deal with magical transference are triggered by touch and guided by breath. This is one of them."_

_Her teeth gnash together as she growled. "I'm. **Not**. Kissing  **you**."_

At the clumsy, smashing touch of skin, the last dregs of personal magic Loki had put into her to give to his past-self surges through her, tingling from the tips of her fingers and toes and traveling up and all the way out of her throat. Keeping her eyes open, she sees it manifest in a green and gold mist that exits from her mouth and enters through his as he abruptly pulls away and sucks in a breath.

In the moment after he pushes her back forcefully, Loki stares down at her unseeingly as his eyes turn fully black before returning to their clear green color. And then he's choking two seconds later, hands clutching at the skin of his neck as he crumples to his knees, a scream of bloody murder escaping him while his skin ripples blue and his eyes bleed red and thick purple smoke  _whooshes_  out of his mouth.

"Oh mother _fucker_ ," she snaps out, backing away quickly as terror floods her, because Loki  _that son of a bitch_  hadn't warned her about  _this_  part and what  _the actual fuck_  was happening?

" **You dare!** " The voice was deeper now with rage, and ultimately, terrifyingly familiar. " **Mortal scum! I will snuff the breath out of your body with my bare hands!** "

Thanos. Fucking hell, it's Thanos and he'd been  _inside_  Loki. Her mind races as she realizes why it had taken the trickster god so long to tell someone the full, _real_  story.

Loki hadn't been under  _mind-control_ —the motherfucker had been fucking  _possessed_ , right up until Thanos invaded Earth for the second time!

Son of a  _bitch!_

" **NO!** " She startles at Thanos's scream, his furious bellow sinking deep into her bones. A moment later, she sees why—a blue-skinned and red-eyed Loki had his hand outstretched, golden magic misting at the tips of his pale blue fingers. The purple smoke swirls into the golden spell, and Anna jerks to avoid the stretching tendrils, taking a deep, sharp breath as she did.

There's the mistake.

 _Most spells that deal with the spirit are triggered by touch and guided by breath_ , Loki's voice reminds her as the smoke gravitates towards her, engulfing her sight and burning her throat as it churns down to take her—mind and body entwined. _This is one of them_.

There's deep laughter vibrating through every fissure of her thoughts, triumph scorching through her every nerve.

'Motherfucker,' she thinks, before her eyes fall shut without her say-so, closing out the rest of the world.


	3. to possessing a time-traveler

An eternity passes her by.

Or at least that's what it seems like. With her eyes closed, she can see nothing, but Anna  _can_ hear and smell and feel everything else. She knows she's still in the detention room of the Helicarrier because the hum of technology never goes away, and the sound of doors whooshing open and feet stomping soon accompanies Loki's struggle to get up.

"Loki, step back in the cage! You! You're under arrest, so put your hands up behind your head! Slowly!"

"Thor," she hears Loki rasp. "Thor!"

"Brother," Uncle Thor's familiar voice thunders through the room. "Are you well? What has happened?"

' **Uncle?** ' something asks just inside her ear, and lassitude creeps into her bones as the darkness is pushed aside with a flash.

" _Hello there, little one," a big face greeted her, and Anna did her best to imitate the smile on his face. "I am your Uncle Thor—"_

"— _run to the elevator, Anna," Uncle Thor said steadily, never facing her as he kept his body between her and the man in violet and yellow on the balcony. "Go—!"_

"— _f_ _ather," Uncle Thor said as he looked up to the king, "I bid you to give blessing to my plea. Allow Anna Stark to take refuge on Asgard as a lady of the court."_

' **Anna Stark.** ' The lethargy pulses again as more memories flood forward.

" _Antoinette Natasha Stark!" her mother's startled voice rings out. "What have you done to our toaster—?!"_

"— _as of today, you can no longer be Anna Stark." She swallowed and met Clint Barton's hard gaze. "Do you understand—?"_

"— _hello," she greeted her guests, resting her wrists at the podium and channeling her father's unflappable confidence. "My name is Anna Stark. Thank you all for coming tonight—"_

"— _your true name must_ _ **never**_ _pass from your lips," Loki warned her. "Nor should you speak of the lineage you come from. This is the second rule."_

Rage suddenly fills her every nerve and Anna gasps, taking a step back at the encompassing emotion. She knows at once that it's a mistake, because the rage doubles when she moves, and a familiar roar echoes and sinks into every crevice of her mind.

"Fuck," she chokes out, clutching at her scalp and dropping to her knees. " _No,_ " she moans, because how the fuck could this happen to her?

Amusement tinges the rage, and Thanos—motherfucking Thanos, holy fucking  _shit_ —laughs. ' **I see,** ' he says. ' **So Anna Stark, One Yet To Be Born. You've come with intentions to thwart my plans.** '

 _Fuck._  "Get out of me, you cock-sucking shit!" she gasps, but despite knowing what she should feel, the adrenaline doesn't rush through her like it had just moments before. Instead, her whole world suddenly bursts into hot flash, white noise searing her ears as every part of her was set on fire.

But through the pain, she sees more.

" _Forgive us, my prince, but we cannot play now. There are places we must be."_

And then the vision dissipates, along with the pain.

' **Watch yourself, Lady Thorsdóttir,** ' he warns. ' _ **I**_ **am your master now.** '

Traces of her scream lingers in her throat, but she manages to gather enough of her wits to croak, "Go fuck yourself," even as she shifts away in a bid to avoid—

The fire returns, and her back arches involuntarily as another scream escapes her.

" _Oh, they are simply busy, Thanos, my son. Come, stay with your lonely mother instead."_

' **It seems so much worse, doesn't it?** ' the deep voice asks, interrupting the memory—because it couldn't be anything else—she was seeing through the pain. ' **I've found that a vessel breaks faster when I start conversion from the inside first.** ' A rumbling chuckle quakes through her nerves. ' **You should be a quick one, mortal.** '

When he finally lets the pain stop, Anna whimpers, "Mother-of-fuck son-of-a-bitch god-shit- _fuck!_ " and slumps over, fatigue seeping into every inch of her being. Some part of her wonders if this is how Loki was kept in line.

Thanos laughs again. ' **Loki is no longer your concern.** '

The outside world suddenly oozes back in, sounding muffled to her ears. "Loki, we won't say it again!" one of the guards yells. "Stop whatever it is you're doing to the girl and get  _back_. In. The cage."

Suddenly, Anna's head turns and her eyelids open—all on their own.

Possession.  _Fuck_.

Through the lingering fog of pain and eyes she could no longer move, Anna recognizes Loki's blue form, leaning heavily against Thor's grip. The fair-haired god has one hand around his smurf of a brother, supporting Loki's weight even as his blue eyes remain on her, alarm and a hint of worry in his eyes. And behind them is a contingent of guards, aiming rifles at them all.

Their mistake? Most were still aiming for Loki, ignorant of the fact that there was another, more dangerous being in the room.

"I've said that this is not my doing! Brother!" Loki shakes his brother's arm lightly. "Brother, I'm not your enemy. I swear it on my name and honor. I wasn't in control!"

' **Sentiment,** ' Thanos grumbles in disgust. ' **I've shown him worlds beyond his knowledge and he still clamors for his captors.** _ **Pathetic.**_ '

' _You're_  pathetic,' she retorts weakly, hoping he'd slip and give a physical reaction with her body to get most of the guns trained on them, but instead of getting angry, Thanos simply chuckles and ignores her.

"Then I was right," Uncle Thor declares. "Who was it, brother? Who took you from us?"

Her mouth suddenly opens. "I did," she says, but it's not Anna who says it. Not really.

…well. At least the guns are pointed at her now.

"And who," the voice from earlier speaks up, "are you?"

Her head turns, eyes moving in the voice's direction, and though she'd never personally met him before, the eye patch gives his identity away.

" _Commander Fury was the leader of S.H.I.E.L.D.," Uncle Thor told her as they gazed up at the stars. "He was a great leader to us."_

"Ah," her mouth sounds. "Commander Fury. We finally meet." Fury stops to her right, between a gap along his men. Her body rises to her feet to face him even as Anna tries to stop it from moving because holy fucking hell, it's like the time she took her father's old suit for a joy-ride and J.A.R.V.I.S. took control of it when her mother ordered him to take her back home. It's like a carnival ride—like a roller coaster and a spinning teacup on a carousel at the same time.

That's what being out of control felt like.

"I'm not a commander," Fury replies with the barest hint of confusion.

" _Tell no mortal of their future," Loki had warned her. "Not even a hint. You, and you alone, will drop the ripples in their ponds. Should anyone else know of what's to come for them, we may end up with the same unfortunate events as our current present."_

_She blinked, turning that over in her head. "What, like a self-fulfilling prophecy?"_

_He smiled. "Precisely."_

Thanos should've known about Fury's current ranking—he'd been in Loki all this time and Anna knows from the old stories that Clint had filled him in on everything. So what was he playing at—?

'Fuck,' she thinks, realizing what Thanos was up to. 'Stop it!' she tells Thanos.

' **Ah, but this is justice,** ' he responds. ' **You dipped your fingers into a plan long-devised, Thorsdóttir. I must ensure that my plans will succeed. Telling the mortals of their future will secure this, will it not?** '

Fuck. Fuckfuckfuckfuck _fuck_. 'Son of a bitch!' she shrieks at him, and he retaliates with a dose of that white hot pain.

Her body bows forward as she screams the pain out once more, and for once, a vision or memory doesn't show up because Thanos is screaming with her.

Or rather, he was  _roaring_  furiously, and the pain is cut off almost immediately.

' **WHAT ARE YOU?** ' he demands, letting her feel his wrath. ' **HOW CAN YOU BREAK MY CONTROL?** '

"I don't know," she whimpers, and this time, she has control of what she's saying, thank fuck. "I don't know, please stop—" because she hadn't been built for this.

Clint and Uncle Thor had taught her how to fight what she could hit. She hadn't been trained for torture.

Thanos rumbles discontentedly, rummaging through her memories so swiftly that it made her nauseous, but it doesn't seem like Thanos finds his answer there because he sends another wave of pain through her, making her scream and writhe.

By the time she recovers from…whatever it was Thanos kept doing to her, it's obvious that she's already missed a great deal of the meeting. "…take your brother to the infirmary," Fury was saying, "and keep an eye on him."

Anna's head turns, her body out of her control once more as her eyes look around. "What…?" her mouth stutters as she takes in the fact that she's now locked in the cage Loki had been in. "What's going on? Where am I?"

Fury looks perplexed. "What's your name?" he asks, clearly ignoring her question.

"My name…" her lips murmurs, Thanos shaping her reply. "Anna S—No!"

Panic—pure, unadulterated panic—somehow grants her the power to retrieve control of her mouth before Thanos could break Time-Travelling Rule Numero Deux. She files that thought away for later dissection as she and Thanos fight for control, her body trembling while her fingernails scratch roughly over the smooth cage floor as she clenches her fingers and Thanos unclenches them right back.

It takes her a few moments to think and wonder why he isn't just dousing her with another bucket of his soul-clenching pain. Then it takes another moment for impulsiveness to capture her.

"The cube will be at Stark Tower in New Yo—!" she manages to get out before Thanos mangles her words with that pain she'd been expecting.

But this time he's  _pissed_. She could feel it in the way he makes the fire burn excruciatingly beyond everything else, and the memories— _Thanos's_  memories—rush past her in broken clips and pieces.

Another eternity passes by.

* * * * *

"How many?" Loki ignores the attention he's drawing from the mortals in the room and focuses on his brother, whose face falls at the question. "Thor," he presses, gently pushing aside the fragile mortal who ridiculously wanted to take his temperature with a respectful nod. The woman gapes at him, but by then, Loki has already turned his attention back to his oldest companion. "Tell me."

"I was told," Thor finally says, "that there were eighty casualties to date."

With a wince at the body count, Loki drops his gaze to the floor, remembering clearly how his body had moved to follow another's whims.

Eighty. Eighty Midgardians. It was one thing to slay eighty warriors—another to slaughter eighty peasants. There was no honor to be found in such deeds and Thanos struck him where he, as a prince of Asgard, would hurt the most.

A warrior's honor was all he had left, saved by his father before he could taint it with the lives of innocent jötnar, but Thanos had ripped even that away from him when he used Loki's body to spill human blood.

"Enough of that, brother," Thor snaps. "You weren't in control. None of this is your fault."

"But it is." Loki meets Thor's narrow-eyed gaze. "Had I not ruined your coronation, none of this would have happened." His mouth dries. "I would never have known about..." He looks down at his hand, still in a deep shade of blue, " about this."

"No, brother," Thor replies firmly. "Had you not ruined my coronation, I'd be a fool king sitting on an undeserved throne while my brother remained ignorant of his blood-heritage." Loki winces at the reminder, but his stubborn brother claps a hand on his shoulder to make him pay attention. "Loki," he intones, "you have missed much. We mourned the loss of you. We thought you dead. Our parents told me why father took you from Jötunheim, about his plans to unite our kingdoms one day—"

"Those plans don't matter," Loki interrupts him bitterly. "Father said as much."

"Because you were to be king of Asgard!" Thor cries, shaking him as he was wont to when trying to bring someone to his senses, though he's never done it to Loki until this instance. " _No one_  knew how long I'd remain in exile and Asgard needed a king! Asgard needed  _you_."

Loki holds his breath, wondering if it was all true.

…by the Nine, what if this was another of Thanos's tricks?

"You  _must_  see the truth in my words," Thor pleads. "Father didn't mean for it to sound callous, but he thought you would come to this conclusion yourself! He didn't consider the effects your discovery would have on your mind—he thought only that he had told a prince that he was to be crowned king. Brother, please!" he adds. "We may not be of flesh and blood, but I and our parents  _are_  your family.  _We love you,_ and this is true not because of what you were born as, but because of who you've grown to be. We have never wish for you to change—and we never will. _That_  is the truth."

Only after the impassioned speech is given did Loki realize he was holding a breath, truly stunned at the sight of the normally-brutish Thor waxing words of affection in a bid to convince him of his beliefs and desires. Loki knows lies intimately, and nothing he'd just heard was that at all.

If this was a trick, then Thanos has discovered his true weakness.

Thor squeezes his shoulder tightly once more. "You're my best friend—my  _brother_. I have none better than you."

Licking his lips, Loki nods and swallows back the lump lodged oddly in his throat. "I believe you."

Thor slumps, bowing his head in relief. "Thank you," he sighs, briefly pressing his forehead against Loki's before pulling away. "You, and only you, can rouse such worry in me. It's maddening."

To Loki's surprise, he finds himself grinning at the sentiment. "Now you know how I feel. I've gone half mad chasing after you and your whirlwind whims after all these centuries," he reminds Thor, who gives his most innocent smile.

"I've no knowledge of these whims," Thor claims with wide eyes. "You truly must be half-gone—or at least five tankards in!"

Loki laughs. "I seem to recall that  _you're_  the one who's half-gone five tankards in," he says, making Thor grin widely.

"Aye, those were the days," Thor sighs nostalgically, and suddenly, the mood turns sober. "Brother," he says, "what happened to you?"

With a deep breath, Loki glances around and notes that the mortals in the room had shuffled to oversee the healing of the half-nude blonde woman escorted in by two guards. Satisfied that no one was about to eavesdrop on their conversation, Loki looks to his brother.

"Sit, brother," he says quietly, "and I shall tell you everything." 

* * * * *

Fury's back in the briefing room by the time Jarvis gives Tony the all-clear, and of course, that's the first thing Fury asks about.

"It's not there yet," Tony answers, "but at least we know where it's headed. For now, can we go over the fact that the guy we thought was _the_ bad guy was actually being possessed by a purple cloud? Because if that was a Chitauri, then we are  _screwed_  if that portal actually opens."

"We'll debrief Loki about his… _possession_ ," Fury grimaces at the word, "later. Right now, I want you and Doctor Banner to keep looking for the cube."

Tony raises both eyebrows. " _Why?_  We already know where it'll be."

"Actually," Bruce speaks up, "I think I'll go do that now." Tony feels a little tingle of  _aw_  race through him when Bruce meets his gaze and tilts his head to the screen. And then the  _aw_ -factor goes away when he realizes  _oh right_. Watching a girl get tortured by purple, gaseous body-snatching aliens  _could_  make for a pretty stressful environment.

And contrary to popular belief, Tony Stark  _can_  be a sensitive guy. "Need some company?" he asks, waggling his eyebrows as he feels the I-wanna-be-alone vibe the mild-mannered scientist was giving off.

It gets him a quick grin from Bruce. "I'm good. Thanks." And then he was off to the lab. Tony sighs, instantly bored without the doctor to keep him entertained—or rather, without the doctor  _to_  entertain.

"Right," Fury says once Bruce was well out of earshot. "I want someone keeping an eye on our new guest at all times. I want to know _the minute_  she can start talking."

"Yes, sir," Hill nods, because she's apparently the one Eyepatch is talking to.

"Do we know how she got onboard?" Fury asks.

She-Minion shakes her head. "We've found nothing from before she was spotted coming out of a closet," Tony stifles a grin at the obviously (because humor was  _clearly_ not part of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s SOP) unintended pun, "in Corridor B-4. She assaulted Agent 13 and took her uniform, then proceeded to a small laboratory to hack into the mainframe for access to a map and the security feed to this room. She didn't linger long though, and proceeded directly to the detention room."

"I need access to those surveillance feeds," Tony demands, waggling his fingers in the universal 'gimme' gesture. There was something odd about what Hill had said, and Tony wants to see the evidence for himself, wants to see what her report couldn't tell him.

She looks to Fury for permission, and Eyepatch gives his consent. The files appear on the console in front of Tony soon after, and he delves into the videos with immediate gusto.

"You looking for something, Stark?" Fury asks.

"Later," Tony waves him off, never looking up from the impressively high-def feeds. "Go whip your little minions into shape or something." Nearby, Coulson gives a loud sigh of exasperation, briefly lifting Tony's spirits before it deflates at the continued screams going on in the background.

Part of him wants to have the feed muted, but another part reminds him that just because he can't hear it doesn't mean it's not happening. And while Tony can ignore a lot of things and be a legendary asshole about it, torture wasn't something he could abide by without doing anything about it. Yeah, he wanted to march down there and kick alien ass, but he's also well-aware that any alien ass-kicking would mean fighting a possessed girl. Asshole he may be, but unless it would help free her from possession, then that wasn't something he could do.

Which was unfortunate, because if that were the case, it would solve a lot of problems very quickly.

Shaking the thought away, Tony focuses on the videos he was going through, listening to the ongoing discussion with half an ear.

And eventually, he sees it.

Yes, the girl did everything Hill said she did all right, but She-Minion had only read the dry facts out to them. As Tony had expected, watching the feeds gives him a better insight on what had happened. And that insight is just what Tony needed to gather all the facts about the girl—Anna.

Fact 1: There was no footage of Anna-girl prior to leaving the closet on Corridor B-4. That suggests she was really good at sneaking around.

Fact 2: She didn't bother hiding after exiting the closet, which suggests she felt confident enough about her disguise that she stopped being sneaky.

Fact 3: Anna-girl had spent almost twenty minutes wandering around, presumably looking for a computer. At that point, Tony starts to doubt his assumption that she had  _snuck_  onto Fury's flying boat, because she'd been walking through the corridors as if she  _belonged_  there, not even bothering to hide from the cameras. What kind of trespassing spy does that?

Hm...maybe they hadn't seen her before because she— No. No, that didn't account for why S.H.I.E.L.D.'s facial rec software didn't spot her before the closet thing. The software couldn't be that awful, could it? And short of her magically appearing onboard…

Hm, well, there's a thought.  _Is_  she a teleporter? Loki had done it earlier, hadn't he? Or was that just something one did while possessed? Then again, Anna-girl hadn't been possessed when she went to see Loki, so maybe he should drop the possessed-teleporter theory. But if she hadn't known about the flying boat's layout, then how did she know which room to teleport into?

Contradictions, contradictions. God, but did Tony  _love_ them—because it usually means that the puzzles are worth taking a second look at.

Fact 4: Anna-girl had accessed only  _one_  video over all else—the feed to this very room. She'd watched them for a little while, but why? Why watch  _them?_ Why not check the hallways or even open the feed to Loki's room to see if the coast was clear? Of all the rooms in the flying boat, why pick  _this_  room?

Because of them? But then, how had she known they'd  _be_  there? Tony very much doubts that it had been a lucky guess on her part, mostly because she'd hesitated over just the one link before clicking it open. No, no. She'd  _known_  what she'd find there. It was evident in every line of her body as she kept her hand poised over that link.

But  _how_  had she known? And  _why_  did she need to see that video?

Fact 5: Anna-girl has crazy-mad hacking skills. Tony's had a decryption program running since he first hit the bridge, but Anna-girl had  _breezed right through it_. And while the camera's angle hadn't caught her face while she was on the computer, it had been perfectly positioned to show them what information she'd pulled up, and what code she'd written to both hack into S.H.I.E.L.D. as well as hide her tracks.

The code is what bugs Tony the most, because he  _knows_  that code. He  _wrote_  that code, not even six hours ago. Jarvis is  _still running_  that very code right now, trying to break through S.H.I.E.L.D.'s firewall without alerting them to the bug. Annoyed as he'd been at S.H.I.E.L.D. for depriving him of celebratory-sex and some well-deserved sleepy-time with his beloved Pepper-bear, he hadn't thought of running the codes separately, instead weaving them together into a complex algorithm that was making it harder for Jarvis to milk every dirty secret S.H.I.E.L.D. had to hide.

'Idiot move,' Tony chastises himself briefly.

But still.  _Still_. How had she known the code? Barring a few variable x and y's, they'd used the same algorithm. Was she that good? Was she  _Tony-Stark_ -level good? Because if she was, then why the hell has Tony never heard of her before? Where had she studied? Where did she come from? Tony's a hundred and ten percent sure that Jarvis had feelers out for every genius developer on the planet, ready for Tony to bribe them with a ludicrous sum of money so that they'd work for him—or rather, work  _at_  Stark Industries. If Anna-girl was  _that good_ , then Tony  _should've_  heard of her before all this.

So why hasn't he?

Fact 6: Anna-girl had come for Loki. She'd known he was possessed, otherwise, she wouldn't have gone through the trouble of sneaking onboard a flying secret government facility only to willingly reveal herself out of the blue. She'd come for Loki, and of all the facts Tony's collected, this is the one he'd bet the Mark VI on. So how did she know where he would be, and how had she known he was possessed—?

…no fucking way.

No.  _Fucking_.  _ **Way!**_

Tony mouths the words soundlessly, eyes snapping up to the still-writhing, still-screaming girl. He's stuck in his seat, sitting with shocked disbelief, and for good reason. Because when he gathers all the questions together into one neat little pile of question marks, it insinuates something so mind-blowing, so out of this world, so fantastical that it thrills the part of him that's always wanted to build  _the_  ultimate invention.

Everyone else was so busy talking about something or another that they don't notice him sitting there, grinning like he's a virgin teen watching his first live strip-tease because  _hell-fucking- **yeah—**_

Anna-girl was a time-traveler.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Corridor B-4** : I don't know the labels for the Helicarrier schematics, so I'm making this up. Also, it was an attempt to be funny. B-4. Before. Get it? Not funny? Yeah, yeah, whatever.
> 
>  **Agent 13** : For those of you who know who Agent 13 is, then yeah, I did throw her in. But that's the only part she plays in this story. This is sort of a backup, just in case I do a sequel or spin-off or something. Best to be prepared ;)


	4. to knowing your enemy

She's been screaming for over an hour now. Maria was still timing it.

Rogers is easily the most distressed. He's horrified and righteous and wants to get in there and try to help her however he could, but unfortunately, this is something Captain America can't work a miracle on.

Banner had wisely retreated to his lab shortly after the screaming started and showed no signs of coming out just yet. That was for the best really, because watching a young girl get tortured by an unknown entity is easily the most enraging thing to see and they do  _not_  need the 'other guy' making an appearance.

Even he, Maria, Phil and Romanoff are unsettled, and they're all veterans of dirty war. They've seen this a hundred times before, but something about not seeing the cause of torture seems to make it look even worse.

But surprisingly enough, it's Stark who's the most  _affected_. He's clearly thinking as fast as he can, trying to come up with a solution to help the unknown girl, and everyone had long ago noticed that his stance and restless pacing grew more agitated the hoarser the girl's voice got.

He suddenly stops, turning to look at them. "We should send someone in there. Distract whatever it is that's doing," his fingers waves circles at the screen, "that. You know, give the spirit-alien-thing someone to monologue to and spill its evil plans for world domination? I volunteer." He ends his speech with a nod and an about-face, and that's about the only time Nick notices that the slippery son of a bitch is already near the door.

"Don't you dare, Mister Stark." The guards at the door moves quickly to block the billionaire's way. "We don't know that it can't do to you what it's doing to her, and we need your brain to pick this apart." There. He's appealed to the man's ego. Hopefully it would keep him from doing something—

"We should call Bruce back," Stark complains. "We already know where your stupid toy will be—he doesn't  _have_  to stay in the lab anymore."

"Absolutely not." Phil manages to make the words sound nice and unprejudiced, and his best field-agent-wrangler clasps his hands together and shifts his weight from his place just behind Rogers and Romanoff's chairs. "Doctor Banner doesn't need the stress of witnessing this."

Stark sighs and shakes his head. "I think everyone's underestimating his control. I think even  _he_  underestimates his self-control," he tacks on as an afterthought.

Nick sighs and wishes for an intervention. "Sit your ass back down, Mister Stark," he tells the stubborn man, and Stark quietly grumbles to himself as he  _plops_  into the open seat at the end of the table, sitting pointedly away from Coulson, Rogers and Romanoff despite bringing himself closer to Nick and Maria by the control hub.

The man  _does_  like to make a point.

"She still screams?" Everyone turns their heads to the doorway, where Thor is hovering over Loki like a nurse after an old man in a walker.

It wasn't the intervention he'd had in mind. Far from it, actually.

He frowns. "What is he doing out of the infirmary?" Nick asks Thor even as he quietly wonders why no one had told him that the duo had left the infirmary.

"Loki has shared valuable insight with me pertaining to the inner workings of our common enemy." Thor pulls out the chair nearest the door and turns it for Loki to sit in. "I thought it prudent to pool our resources together."

Nick doesn't protest, because he  _had_  been on the verge of leaving the room to have that particular talk with Loki. "Our common enemy?" he asks instead, feeling very much ready to finally get some answers.

"Thanos," the dark-haired god replies soberly, never taking his eyes off the girl on the screen as he slid onto the chair with a measured breath. Thor settles into the seat between his brother and Rogers. "He possessed me after I attempted to sever my alliance with him."

"Such actions are criminal on Asgard," Thor jumps in immediately. "And against a prince of the realm, the punishment for it shall be even more severe."

"What, you gods don't have protection against possession?" Stark asks sarcastically.

"We do," Thor answers, glancing at his brother. Loki doesn't react, and Thor takes that as his cue to explain further. "All sentient creatures have a certain amount of protection against mental and physical invasion, though the amount differs in every realm. To take hold of an Asgardian's full senses, the Asgardian must give up his free will to the invader. This implies the strongest bonds of brotherhood and trust. However," Thor glances at Loki again, "even the best of Asgardians can yield when placed under the most horrific of tortures—either mentally or physically. Or both."

Loki grunts softly, silencing Thor. "I am not Asgardian by birth," he tells them tentatively, and Thor shoots Loki an amazed look, "and as such, the amount of… _persuasion_  needed to possess me was far greater, especially since the use of my soul as a magical conduit was at stake. And Thanos was very persistent in his campaign to claim me as his vessel. And even now that he's lost me as a conduit, his plans are in motion, so he will double his efforts on her," he nods to the girl, pity and sympathy clear on his eyes.

"Double his efforts?" Rogers pipes up. "What do you mean? He's already possessed her."

"I suppose the mechanics of this aren't familiar to you," the god muses. "Very well. Unlike long-lived races," he begins, and Nick doesn't have to look at Maria to know that she's taking notes, "human bodies age quickly. That… _ability_  makes it easier for you to be manipulated, through mind-control, possession or other similar methods. Normally, that's all one needs to attain information or control movement. But if Thanos wishes to perform magic, he will have to break through her free will."

"Why?" Stark asks, looking fascinated with the explanation.

Loki actually looks uncomfortable with the intensity of Stark's stare. "Well, free will is a pathway of sorts into the soul, which allows us to connect into the energy of the cosmos—or in other words, magic. If Thanos is to move forward with his plans, he'll need to use magic, which is why the lady," he nods to the girl once more, "still undergoes such horrors. And Thanos doesn't just employ the use of mental and physical torture," he tacks on before anyone can ask anything. "He somehow touches the very soul and sets it alight. Eternities will pass her by and in all that time, all she'll know is pain. And then, when it feels like nothing worse can come, he'll stop and offer her relief, if only she willingly cedes all control to him."

"And when she doesn't?" Stark asks quietly, still staring at Loki attentively. It's when the god's eyes glaze over in remembrance that Nick finally understands that Stark was pursuing the topic for something specific. Loki has firsthand knowledge of what it's like to be possessed, and Stark had figured something out that could be related to the whole possession thing. Of course, this was also an avenue that S.H.I.E.L.D. needed more information on, so they were benefiting from this too, which is why Nick keeps quiet and lets the billionaire do all the talking for them.

He'll find out what Stark wasn't telling them soon enough, even if he has to resort to bribery or threats.

"He'll show her possibilities," Loki replies, actually looking lost in his memories. "He'll seduce her senses and appeal to her honor and morals—show her a world where everything is perfect under his rule. And when she doesn't give him what he wants," he says, "he'll delve into her memories and bring her loved ones to life, and then show her how to kill them with her bare hands. He'll go back and forth between her idea of a utopia and hell, breaking her mind bit by bit until she can no longer withstand his assault and accept him as her master. Worse," he adds, "is that Thanos gleaned many tricks from my mind. He knows that he'll remain inside her unless we perform an exorcism, and my powers are too unstable to cast such a powerful spell. He  _will_  use the girl to put forward his plans, and I fear that her body shall wear out quickly should he force it to conduct magic."

"How long will she last?" Banner's voice drifts over, and they find him standing awkwardly by the door. The soft screams in the background abruptly taper off, and Maria meets his gaze as she puts away her tablet.

Nick nods in thanks as Stark waves Banner over to sit next to him, catching the wary look that appears in Loki's eyes. Huh. Thor looks unconcerned, but Nick supposes that's because Thor is supposedly the god of strength. Loki, however, seems to force himself to relax as the scientist slips tentatively onto the chair beside him in order to indulge his new best friend.

Interesting. So Loki was wary of Banner, or more accurately, the Hulk. Good to know.

"I suppose it depends on what horrors Thanos chooses to inflict on her. But she  _will_  break, of that I assure you."

"I'm sorry, that wasn't what I meant," Banner says, almost stuttering. Huh. The man housing the most powerful entity on the planet, god-fearing? In a less stressing time, Nick would've found that funny, especially when S.H.I.E.L.D.'s best analysts had classified the Hulk as more dangerous than  _Thor_. "I was asking how long she'd last  _as_  Thanos's magic-using vessel. You're immortal, so I guess that means you're more durable than…someone not immortal. How long would someone not immortal last under his control?"

"Ah," Loki nods in understanding. "If he uses the advanced magicks I am used to performing, she'd last an hour—perhaps two. While mortal souls  _can_ manipulate such potent energies, the effects to both mind and body can be devastating. Many have had their minds twisted around, their sense of right and wrong shifting the longer they conduct cosmic energy."

"Aye, and her body will burn out too fast," Thor tacks on repetitively with a glance at Loki, and they both grimace uncomfortably. "The last mortal I'd seen practicing magic had aged swiftly from a sweet young lady into a black-hearted crone. What was her name, brother?"

Loki's eyebrows furrow for a moment. "Anna," he says triumphantly before Nick can put them back on track. "Anna Morgause!"

Nick's mind briefly grinds to a halt, because he could swear that name was in the Arthurian legends.

"Anna Morgause!" Thor smacks the table. "Yes. The poor thing." Nick does his best not to roll his good eye, and silently asks whoever was listening to give him the strength to live through the damn impromptu meeting.

Stark had no such restraints, visibly looking heavenward before opening his mouth. "What a coincidence," he declares sarcastically. "Our newly possessed Glinda is also apparently called Anna. We  _think_ her last name is Snow, but we're not really sure about it because she started seizing and yelling right after. Honestly," he adds, "it's a bad porn name, though it's not as horrible as the other one. What was it—more-goes?"

"She said the cube would be at Stark Towers," Nick says before either brother can absorb that last part. "Is it true?"

Surprise crosses Loki's face, and he leans forward in clear interest. "She warned you? Even after Thanos wrested control of her body?"

"She did," Nick nods, a little irritated that his question wasn't immediately answered.

Loki looks disturbed at the news. "It should be impossible for her to break his control of her body now," he mutters. "But yes, the Lady Anna is correct. I myself attempted to warn you, but…well," he smiles wanly, "I'd been under his control for too long, and thus could only influence his words so long as he assumed they were aimed to mock you rather than aid you. I could not say it outright."

"A warm light for all of mankind to share," Romanoff quotes in realization. "Stark's new arc reactor."

"Indeed." Loki turns his gaze at her. "And your Agent Barton was unharmed when I last heard Thanos speak to him." Romanoff's eyes narrow, but she nods in acknowledgement, her shoulders relaxing ever so slightly.

"Hold up," Nick huffs, irritated by the topic change. "Thanos. Who is he? Where'd he come from?"

"From what I have been able to glean from him, Thanos is a Titan prince from a dimension beyond our Nine Realms," Loki answers. "His mentor is Death, and she groomed him as her harbinger, her avatar. However, his father discovered Death's actions and had her temple destroyed, forcing her to leave. Thanos retaliated by destroying his world, and now he's made it his mission to see her again by invoking her with stolen life."

"Well," Banner says, "that's romantic of him."

Stark snorts and glances at the scientist. "Yeah, if you're a doom and gloom kind of person." He exaggerates a double-take. "Oh, right." Banner's lips twitch upward in slight amusement.

"So what you're saying is," Nick says to get them back on track, "he'll kill everyone on Earth just to win… _Death_  back."

"Oh, no, no," Loki shakes his head. "That's not his only goal. He also means to claim the Cosmic Cube—your so-called Tesseract. You see, a few of your years past, Thanos was made aware that the cube was activated here, which is why he turned his attentions to Earth. He's been planning his acquisition of it ever since."

"That must be when HYDRA first got their hands on it," Rogers muses, staring intently at Loki from across the round table, as if he's waiting for the god to give him instructions. "So how do we stop him?"

"By taking the Tesseract out of his hands and away from his reach," Loki replies.

"Obviously," Stark tacks on, rolling his eyes at Rogers before turning back to Loki. "What does he want with it, anyway?"

"The Tesseract," Thor answers, "is the energy of the cosmos, entrapped by a foul sorcerer in a bid to destroy Asgard. Our father managed to trick the sorcerer and won it when he was a prince, and he ascended the throne soon after presenting it to his father, the then-king. It is unknown how the Tesseract was created, only that it can give its wielder unimaginable power."

"Thanos wants to use this to alter himself," Loki adds, giving them the actual answer to Stark's question, though the background on the Tesseract isn't an unwelcome piece of information. "He means to make himself a god of death, in order to draw power from every life that passes on. He wants to be just like her."

"So if we take the Tesseract out of the equation," Banner says, "the invasion, all his plans—they're gone. They can't happen."

Loki nods. "Precisely."

"Then what are we waiting for?" Rogers asks, leaning forward and capturing everyone's attention. "We already know that it's at Stark Tower, so we can set a trap—"

"No, we don't," Stark interrupts him, holding a hand out to silence everyone else. "Anna-girl said it  _will be_  at Stark Towers. I've had Jarvis running a scan of the entire area for unauthorized activity since we heard her say it and he updates me every ten minutes. No one's there—not yet. That means that Selvig and Barton are still building the reactor they need to open the portal. Question is," he adds, "has Thanos already told his minions to move their location because Anna-girl sold them out to us?" He paused to let that thought sink in. "Going on that tangent, our first priority—our first move," Stark taps his fingers against the table to emphasize it, "—should be to make sure Thanos doesn't or hasn't warned off his minions. Is there any way we can do that?" he asks, abruptly moving his gaze toward Loki's direction.

The god blinks for a moment, caught off-guard by the sudden address, and fuck, but  _this_  was why Nick wants the bastard in the Avengers Initiative. If anyone can unsettle a god just by opening his mouth, it was Tony Stark.

"I know that he needs the scepter to direct his people with his thoughts," Loki answers when he recovers from his surprise. "Especially at this great a distance. He can speak his commands without it only when they are physically in his presence."

"Great," Stark nods, clapping his hands and rubbing them together. "So we keep the glow-stick of enslavement out of his hands—old Saint Nick and his house-elves can get on that."

Nick blinks in consternation. Had Stark just  _delegated_  shit to him?

"Second," Stark continues, never looking away from Loki, "what time do you think his people will be there?"

"The portal's set to open at high noon," Loki answers, and Nick notices him slouching into the chair, as if relaxing now that they were actually talking about _doing_  something for the invasion problem. "Thanos wished to attain a maximum death count at first impact."

"Son of a—" Rogers cut himself off, glancing at Maria and Romanoff as a sheepish expression replaces the quick anger that had briefly appeared. "Sorry."

" _Any_ way," Stark moves on with yet another roll of his eyes, "what security are we looking at? Barton's a pretty experienced agent, so he's probably the one leading the troops. What's his plan?"

Loki doesn't even blink. "He's going to attack your ship two hours before then," and at this, everyone who isn't Stark begins to react, even Nick, "in order to unleash the monster and decimate your ranks, then sabotage your engines, leaving you helpless and unable to act as the invasion begins."

The room goes into an uproar.

* * * * *

' **You are impressive.** '

Though half out of her mind, Anna's exemplary personality shines through. 'You're a dick.'

' **You did not beg for reprieve as the Asgardian had,** ' Thanos rumbles quietly. ' **I wonder** …' A groan escapes her as she feels him rifling through her memories again, each one passing by her mind's eye so fast it made her queasy. Then it stops.

And Anna sees her mother.

Heart thudding fiercely in her chest, she watches as Thanos manipulates the image and made her come to life. Pepper Stark wanders over to sit beside Anna on the cage floor and the soft touch of her fingers against Anna's sweaty forehead feels so real it makes her whimper longingly.

"Stop," she manages to grit out with her mouth, suddenly in control of her body.

"Stop what, sweetie?" Pepper asks as she helps Anna into a sitting position and wraps her slim familiar arms around her. "Oh, honey," she sighs, "I missed you so much." And then she starts humming an old lullaby, and nostalgia clogs Anna's throat as her beautiful mother entwines their fingers together. The sobs escape her when Uncle Rhodey appears and takes her other hand.

"Hey, Anna-girl," he says with a small smile.

"You're not real," she whispers, trying to remind herself of that in spite of how real his hand felt in hers. "You're dead."

"I am," he agrees, and Anna sucks in a stuttering breath at the fresh wave of pain those words bring. "But not in here," he adds, tapping the spot above her heart. He smiles at her kindly, and with a strangled laugh, she smiles back, thinking that she must look like a mess to him.

"I miss you," she tells him hesitantly as a voice in the back of her mind whispers that something was wrong, that something was  _off_.

"I know, baby girl," he nods. "I miss you too."

A throat clears quietly. "What about me?" Uncle Bruce asks, materializing behind Rhodey.

Anna smiles. "Of course I miss you," she says magnanimously.

His expression turns skeptical. "Are you sure?" he asks again. "If I remember correctly, I got Rhodey killed." Anna swallows heavily at the reminder, her gut tightening in apprehension. "Kind of like this," he adds, pulling a gun out of nowhere and shooting Rhodey in the chest.

Anna jerks back with a loud cry, her back colliding with her mother.

"Do you still miss me?" Uncle Bruce asks, his eyes turning green as he aims the gun at her and shoots. Anna flinches back, half-expecting the pain of being shot to appear, only to realize—

"Mom," she breathes when Pepper fell to the floor, blood blossoming in her chest. Anna sinks to her knees, pulling her mother into her arms. "Mom, no! Mom!"

"How do you like me now?" Bruce laughs.

"It's not real," Anna mouths to herself, starting to rock back and forth as she mutters the words. "It's a trick, it's not real."

The gun suddenly presses into her back. "Does it  _feel_  like a trick?" And then her hair is yanked backward, her mother pulled out of her arms, and Bruce tosses her away like a ragged, lifeless doll.

Her spine hits the bench painfully, and then Uncle Steve is there, hands tugging at her stolen uniform. "Thor saved you from this, remember?" His words—coupled with his actions—have Anna panicking and struggling to get him off of her, reaching out to slap him and extending her leg out to kick him or drive a knee into his nuts. "What are you doing?" he asks as her knee hit the inside of his thigh, his laughter making it clear that he found her actions ridiculous. "I'm  _superhuman_ , Anna. You can't fight  _me_."

"She  _is_  being irrational," Bruce says, tucking the barrel of his gun into her leg and pulling the trigger without a scrap of compunction. Anna lets loose a loud howl as agony sears through her every nerve. "There," he tells her amicably, smiling as he drops the gun and helps Steve tear her now-bloody pants off. "Now we can recreate that moment in full."

"Please stop! Don't do this!" Anna sobs, squeezing her eyes shut as the uncles she'd grown up with pawed at her, exactly like the ones Uncle Thor had—

"Release her!" a voice thunders, and then the two men disappear off of her. Anna's eyes snap open in surprise, and there he was, tossing the form of Steve Rogers into a glass wall and slamming Bruce Banner into the ground.

"Uncle Thor," she murmurs, her body relaxing. He always came for her. Always, without fail.

' **Interesting.** '

With a start, Anna remembers that all this really wasn't real, and everyone else in the room disappears, leaving her alone in the cage once more. Fully-clothed and with a pointed lack of bullet holes too, thank fuck.

' **You truly are impressive, Lady Thorsdóttir. Not even Loki had such measures to protect his sanity.** '

Anna doesn't really digest what he's saying—all she can think and focus on is the fact that Thanos had  _used_  the people she loved to thoroughly mind-fuck her, and the mere idea that  _he can_   _do that_  scares her shitless. 'Son of a bitch,' she thinks, directing her thoughts at him when she finds herself unable to move her own body once again. 'You bastard cock-sucking  _asshole son of a_ _ **bitch!**_ '

' **Indeed?** ' Thanos asks, sounding amused. ' **Very well.** '

And then Clint Barton appears before her, clad in his typical grey muscle shirt and loose black pants. He looks like he's about to drag her out to the beach for another one of his never-ending combat-fighting sessions. The sight of him standing there has Anna's heart skipping a beat, and Thanos's chuckle echoes menacingly from around her.

' **Let us count the ways I can break you, shall we?** '

* * * * *

Through the antagonistic atmosphere circling the room, Stark's exasperated air is like a beacon shining through a thick fog. Somehow, their indignant reaction to Loki's claim had been shifted onto Stark, because  _of course_  the man had already deduced that Clint would be leading an attack—why else would Thanos let Loki be willingly captured?

"And you don't think that information would've been useful when it occurred to you?" Fury was demanding.

Stark rolls his eyes. "I only put it together when our resident body-snatcher made his first appearance. Well, actually I thought Anna-girl over there was one of his mind-controlled minions with orders to set him loose on your flying pirate ship," he tacks on. "You know, launch an attack behind enemy lines and stuff. But when she let us know about Thanos, well," he shrugs, "I figured if not her, then someone else."

Natasha grimaces. Stark had long ago made his distaste of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s methods clear, and it shows in the disjointed way he explains his thought-process. There's more to it—there always is with Tony Stark—and if the pattern continues, then they'd only find out his 'predictions'  _after_  they happen, or if someone else would try to beat him to the punch. And though she'd love to do nothing more than prove how true that latter option could be, she knows she isn't as fast as Stark is on the uptake, and any attempts to try to play him again would be met with outright hostility, and possibly a cessation of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s alliance with Stark's Iron Man ego. And Natasha wasn't going to be the idiot who causes  _that_  particular problem.

"So why didn't you say anything?" Rogers asks, looking as miffed as the director.

"Well, Cap, believe it or not, that actually wasn't the most pressing problem we had at the time," Stark snaps, though he only gave the captain a shot glance, as if the man wasn't worth more than that brief look.

"What—the possessed girl?" Rogers snaps back.

This time, Stark turns his head fully to the super-soldier, giving him an outright sneer. " _If_  you must know," he enunciates clearly, something Natasha had only seen him do once during her time as his assistant—Pepper had later revealed that it meant Stark had skipped being mad and gone straight to furious. "I was trying to figure out whether we stood a chance against an alien race with gaseous form. Which we can't, by the way, because we don't have the technology for it."

"Gaseous?" Thor echoes, looking bewildered.

"Something without a body," Stark explains dismissively.

"I know what gaseous means," Thor says, frowning. "That is not what confused me. Did you think the Chitauri were of gaseous state?"

Stark holds a finger out. "Keyword there was 'did,'" he defends. "And besides, it's not like you described the damn things. I only had 'alien race' to go on."

"True," Thor concedes. "Forgive me for my lack of warning. I too know little of the Chitauri, but I at least knew they were not incorporeal in form."

"It's fine, big guy," Stark says magnanimously. "But seriously, let's move on."

"I agree," Fury intones darkly. "Mister Stark, is there anything else you'd like to tell us that concerns the invasion?"

Stark blinks. "Um, no."

Fury looks directly at Natasha, and she makes a split-second decision. "He's telling the truth," she lies. "For now, at least."

"Hey!" Stark protests, putting a hand dramatically to his chest. But there's an acknowledgement in his gaze that assures Natasha that she was right, and that her helpfulness in this moment had allowed her to rise in his esteem.

Good. He might be a gigantic pain in the ass, but Stark was still a certified genius. And Natasha had firsthand experience on how the man's thought-process worked. If anyone could help her figure out how to save Clint, it was Tony Stark.

"Fine," Fury snaps. "Hill, what's the status on our guest?"

Hill glances down at her tablet. "Still incapacitated, sir." Natasha holds back a sneer. Incapacitated—what a way to understate the girl's situation.

Fury huffs, as if he found the fact that the girl was being tortured an inconvenience equal to rush hour traffic. Sometimes, the man really got on Natasha's nerves. "With me," he says to Hill, who tucks her tablet underneath her arm as Fury adds, "Doctor Banner, if you could find the cube earlier? Coordinate with Loki, narrow down where it's coming from. Maybe we can catch it before it reaches Stark Tower. Coulson, Romanoff, keep an eye on Mister Stark—"

"Two agents for  _me?"_ Stark manages to look absolutely delighted.

"—keep him out of trouble," Fury ends exasperatedly.

Natasha waits until he and Hill had left before getting up and rounding in on Stark. "You're telling me what you're not telling them," she demands, barely able to stop herself from grabbing his arm and latching on to ensure he doesn't leave her in the dark like he's doing to the others.

"Keep it down," Stark snaps, glancing quickly at Rogers, who was busy engaging Thor in conversation. "Agent," Stark greets Coulson brightly as the man approaches. "Natashalie and I were just—"

"Taking me along with you," Coulson finishes the sentence dryly, "because I know when two of my special little snowflakes are up to no good."

"How many snowflakes do you have exactly?" Stark asks. Eerily enough Natasha had said almost the exact same thing. Exchanging a glance with the billionaire, Natasha's disturbed to find him with a similar, eyebrows-raised expression. "Huh," Stark says, waggling his eyebrows. "I guess we  _are_  special snowflakes."

It's not surprising that Natasha finds herself smothering a smirk. What's surprising is the fact that she has to smother one in the first place.

Coulson visibly holds back a sigh. "Do lead the way, Mister Stark."

Stark gestures after the retreating backs of Loki and Dr. Banner. "We're following them," he announces. "I have some questions that need answering, and there's only one alien, alleged god around here that actually  _answers_  questions."

Another smirk smothered, Natasha falls into step with Coulson and follows after the walking epitome of 'eccentric billionaire.'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Anna Snow** : If you didn't get it, the Avengers and S.H.I.E.L.D. think that Anna's last name is Snow because when Thanos tried to tell them her real identity, Anna was able to briefly regain control and say, "No!" So to the non-possessed people on the Helicarrier, it sounded like 'Snow.' All of that happened in the previous chapter.
> 
>  **Plot change** : Well, not an actual plot change, but the method of revelations have been changed thanks to inkspire, who inspired me to take the roundabout way. Thank you, inkspire! Natasha Romanoff's POV in the last part of this chapter was added thanks to your suggestion. ;)


	5. to breaking news and minds

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warning** : explicit sex and death, the former more explicit than the latter, though some feel that it's debatable. Feel free to skip to the note at the end for a summarized version so you can avoid the explicit and not miss the important bits anyway.

It starts with Bruce asking the God of Mischief where Thanos had sent the cube. "I've no clue," Loki replies, shrugging with the all the elegant air of...well, of a prince. "As we know, it's headed for your City of New York, but as Thanos also told my brother, he knew nothing of the methods Agent Barton would employ in delivering the cube to its final destination."

"Oh," Bruce had said, and then Tony, Natasha and Agent Coulson walks into the lab. There's a joke in there somewhere, Bruce knows, and the punch line is something along the lines of an elephant tripping over its own trunk because that's how graceful the discussion turns out.

"Hey doc," Tony greets him cheerfully, moving right to the black case sitting on one of the tables. "What's going on?"

Bruce shrugs as he ran a scanner over the scepter Loki—or Thanos, rather—had used to mind-jack S.H.I.E.L.D.'s people. "No go on the tracking part," he tells them. "Apparently, Thanos left the entire delivery operation for Barton to arrange. Loki's given us all he can about the cube."

Loki seems to take offence to that. "I can tell you much about the Cosmic Cube," he says defensively. "But yes," he admits after a moment, "I know not how it will reach Stark Tower."

"So I'm back to this," Bruce raises the scanning wand for clarification, "but even though it matches Selvig's reports on the Tesseract, it's going to take weeks to process."

Tony hums, fiddling with the terminal that he's setting up. "Not if we by pass their mainframe, direct route to the home work-cluster and clock this at around…" he twists his wrist, "600 teraflops."

"Heh," Bruce huffs as the necktie-wearing S.H.I.E.L.D. agent starts complaining. "All I packed was a toothbrush."

That makes Tony laugh—he's obviously ignoring everything Coulson is saying to him—as he leaves the terminal and approaches Bruce, presumably to check on his work. "You know, you should come by Stark Tower sometime. Top ten floors? All R&D. You'd love it—it's candy-land."

Bruce drops his gaze to the keyboard, focusing on the information he's getting rather than the attractive and kind offer Tony was extending to him. It doesn't help that the man is crazy enough to be sincere about it.

Tony Stark is as unconventional as he'd heard.

"Thanks, but the last time I was in New York I…" he shoots a sheepish glance at the agents, "kind of broke…Harlem."

Tony waves his hands dismissively, as if the prospect of the Other Guy making an appearance didn't bother him in the slightest. "Well, I promise a stress-free environment," he says, walking around to Bruce's side. "No tension, no surprises—"

"Ow!" Bruce exclaims as something sharp cackles through his shirt and against his skin. By the time everyone—including a louder voice Bruce recognizes as Steve's—protests the action, the pain had disappeared, and the flash of annoyance Bruce felt was chased away by the eager look in Tony's eyes as he peers closely at Bruce.

"Nothing?" he asks, managing to look interested and disappointed at the same time. Bruce couldn't hold back an amused grin at Tony's…well, eccentricity.

"Are you nuts?" Steve asks, sounding angry as he stomps in, Thor following closely with a bewildered look.

"Jury's out," Tony says lightly, pulling another reluctant laugh from Bruce.

But the amusement fades because of the tense atmosphere, and another glance at everyone lets Bruce take in the stern glare on the captain's face and the hands-on-gun stance Natasha and Agent Coulson have adopted. Even Loki looks tense—though that was a little pleasing, considering that for someone who's supposed to be a god, he looked pretty anxious at the thought of facing the Other Guy. The only one who hadn't reacted so violently is Thor, but that probably doesn't count because he's supposed to be the god of thunder and strength and whatnot, so there probably isn't much that Thor's afraid of.

Tony turns back to Bruce and, half-expecting the man to realize what he'd done and react similarly to everyone else, Bruce returns to the task at hand. "You really have got a lid on it, haven't you?" he asks rhetorically. "What's your secret—mellow jazz, bongo drums, huge bag of weed?"

"Is everything a joke to you?" Rogers persists unhappily.

"Funny things are," Tony replies.

"Threatening the safety of everyone on this ship isn't funny," Steve snaps, which sort of hurt because…well,  _Captain America_  thinks he's a threat. "No offense," he tacks on, glancing at Bruce briefly before turning his glare back on Tony.

The off-hand apology doesn't soothe the hurt, and deep beneath his consciousness, a dim roar rumbles through his head. "Yeah, i-it's all right," Bruce says, more to convince the Other Guy than to assuage Steve's clearly non-existent guilt over the—also clearly—unintended insult. "I wouldn't have come aboard if I couldn't handle—" he glances at the object in Tony's hand and doesn't recognize it, "…pointy things."

Tony walks away with a huff, but before Bruce can finish feeling hurt at the presumed rejection, he says, "You're tiptoeing, big man," in a fond tone. "You need to  _strut_."

And despite Steve's snap that Tony needed to focus on the problem now, Bruce is relieved that he somehow has someone  _vouching_  for his self-control, even if it's in a rather roundabout way.

"You think I'm not?" Tony asks, a plastic wrapper crinkling in his hand. "Why did Fury call us and why  _now?"_  he points out. "Why not before? What isn't he telling us?"

"Mister Stark," Coulson finally speaks up, breaking into the rather impressive show Tony was just starting to put on, "we didn't—"

Tony holds up a hand. "I didn't say you, Agent. I said 'Fury.'" And then he narrows his eyes at Coulson. "Unless you wanna tell us what he's not saying."

"I can't say for sure what he's keeping quiet about," Coulson hedges.

Tony harrumphs. "Then you don't get to sidetrack me," he tells the agent. "I'm getting to the bottom of it." Then Tony grins and strikes a pose. "Call me Holmes. Sherlock Holmes."

"You really think Fury's hiding something," Steve half-asks, bringing them back on-topic.

"He's a spy," Tony says, reaching into the bag for…was that blueberries? "Captain, he's  _the_  spy. His secrets have secrets," he exaggerates before stuffing a handful of blueberries into his mouth. "And it's bugging him too," he adds as he chews, and Bruce buckles at being put under the spotlight once more.

Bruce hems and haws, trying to wave the attention away. "I just wanna finish my work here and—"

"Doctor?" Steve presses with a no-nonsense voice that keeps the room quiet.

Well mostly quiet, as Thor leans close to Loki and asks in an ineffective whisper, "What is it they speak of?"

Loki hushes his brother, peering intently at Bruce.

Nervous at the attention, Bruce releases a breath of air and takes his glasses off to fiddle with so that he doesn't have to look at anyone as he began. "'A…warm light for all mankind'—Thanos's jab at Fury about the cube."

"I heard it," Steve confirms. Bruce tries not to squirm at being the sole focus of Captain America's gaze.

"Well, like Loki said, it was Thanos taunting us with the cube's location, but I also think there's more to it. I think it was meant more for you," Bruce says, gesturing to Tony. A small smirk of approval appears on Tony's face and he offers his blueberries up to Bruce—as a ruse to hide his expression or as a reward for Bruce's insight or perhaps both, Bruce isn't sure. In any case, Bruce  _is_  a little hungry, so he takes two and sets them down on the table for later consumption, when he  _really_  got hungry. "Even if Barton didn't tell Thanos about the tower, it was still all over the news."

"What's so special about that big ugly—" Tony turns sharply to Steve, who politely ceases his condescending tone, "—building in New York anyway?" Behind Steve, Bruce sees Natasha bite back a grin of amusement.

Bruce hides a smile of his own. "It's powered by an arc reactor—a self-sustaining energy source," he states, glancing at Tony questioningly, though by now he's realized that this whole show was to get Steve up to speed on what was happening. At Tony's nod, Bruce continues. "That thing will run itself for what—a year?"

Tony shrugs. "It's just a prototype." And he isn't bragging at all when he says it, because for him, it's just a fact. "I'm kind of the only name in clean energy right now," he explains to Steve, who was doing his best not to look confused. "That's what he's getting at." Something clicks for Steve, and his face clears in understanding.

"So why didn't S.H.I.E.L.D. bring him in on the Tesseract project?" Bruce points out. "I mean, w-what are they doing in the energy business in the first place?"

At that, Steve glances at Coulson and Natasha. "Would you care to explain?" he asks them.

Natasha holds her hands up. "Don't look at me," she claims, apparently affected by the captain's stare. "I've been on two consecutive assignments since my appointment with Mister Stark—that's where my focus has been." The last part is said a little bitterly, and Bruce supposes it was because of the missing agent she's been so fixated on.

Even Coulson seems to blanch a little when Steve turns his gaze towards him. "I think you should take the matter to Director Fury," he says in avoidance.

Steve seems to sense that he wouldn't get anything from Coulson and Natasha, so he exhales heavily and agrees, leaving the room abruptly.

"Finally," Tony sighs, looking relieved. "That's the guy my dad never shut up about?" he adds with a whine. "Now I'm wondering if they shouldn't have kept him on ice."

Bruce huffs a laugh even as Coulson turns his indignant eyes on Tony. "Watch it, Mister Stark."

"Watching it," Tony acquiesces, holding his hands up in a move reminiscent of Natasha's reaction to Steve's scrutiny. "And now we move onto topic number two," he says, eyes twinkling as he moves his attention to Loki and Thor. "So," he begins nonchalantly. " _About_  our little time-traveler."

* * * * *

The familiar shriek of a seagull wakes her up and for a moment, Anna wonders what the hell Clint had fed her last night for her to have such a weird dream. Not that she can remember what said dream was, but the feeling of oddness clings to her as she rolls over, slipping an arm and a leg over smooth, hard man-flesh. A deep hum of pleasure rumbles under her cheek and she sighs in satisfaction.

It was a good morning already.

A large hand glides up her hips and over her waist. "Are you up?"

She bites back a giggle when he predictably cups her breast and smoothes a thumb over her nipple. "No." She moves her leg up until her knee is tucked between his cock and balls. "But you are."

He laughs and moves over her, and she keeps her eyes closed as he presses their lips together. His body slides between her legs easily, hips rolling against hers, and she pulls back with a gasp when he sinks into her without warning, her body stretching around him pleasurably.

"Oh, shit," she mutters, clutching at his shoulders and squeezing her eyes further shut as she wonders just how long he was because holy fuck, would he _never end?_

"Damn, Anna." His breath spreads hotly across the hollow of her throat when her mons can finally grind against his skin. "My god, you feel so good."

He trails kisses down her chest as he leisurely fucks her, and she keens when his teeth tug sharply at her right nipple and his hips roll into her at the same time, because the combined sensations are  _amazing_  together and he reaches in so deep and puts delicious pressure on her clit at the same time. She does her best to try and look up at him, but his mouth is busy worshiping at the altar of her breasts and shoulder and throat and who was she to stop him? So she runs her tongue over the shell of his ear and sucks at his lobe whenever she can reach it instead, and when her mouth isn't doing that, she murmurs her thoughts aloud to him, knowing it drives him crazy when she talks borderline-dirty to him.

"These arms make it so hard for me to concentrate on my training," she whispers, brushing the tips of her fingers along his biceps before moving her hands away. Then her fingers dig into his ass and scratch a path up his back, making him jerk sharply into her, a grunt of surprise escaping him. "Fuck," she moans, rolling her hips against him. "Again. Do that again."

"No." He bites down at her shoulder.

"Bastard." She clenches her muscles around him, drawing a strangled gasp from his throat. Losing rhythm, he tries to slow his thrusts but Anna isn't having any of it. "Please," she murmurs, brushing her lips over the shell of his ear as she arches her back and bucks her hips up as wantonly as she could. "I'm so close already. Can you feel me shaking? You do that to me  _all_  the time—"

"God-fucking- _damn_ , Anna." Her legs are hiked up into the air, those big hands hooking behind her knees to press her thighs against her breasts as he speeds up his pace, turning their lazy morning sex into a more frantic, sharp coupling. The headboard starts slamming noisily into the wall, and she moans and keens and mewls and intersperses all of that with expressive cusses because she knows that hearing her lose her cool like that get him off just as fast, and _god_ , but she fucking loves making this previously uptight, highly-disciplined man lose his cool like this.

Her ego swells twice as large every time.

A firm hand slithers around her neck, and Anna looks up into the bright, bright blue of Clint Barton's eyes as he buries his dick deep, stops moving, and begins to strangle her.

"No." She chokes on the word, but it doesn't matter because she needs to get loose. "Clint—" She scratches at his hand, slaps him repeatedly across the face and yanks at his salt-and-peppered hair, to no avail. "—stop it!"

' **But you love this**.'

She always remembers that fucking bastard too late. "Tha—" her eyes threaten to roll back as he squeezes tighter, "—nos."

"You love this man," he says with Clint's voice, and Clint's lips stretch into the smile that's made her ache between her legs from the time she was seventeen years old and following him as he looked for a casual hook-up with the usual random redhead in Madrid. "From what I've seen, this affection you have is considered disgraceful. Why, then, would a woman of your Earthly ranking possess such a desire? Not to mention," he adds, and the body between hers pulls out and pushes in again, making her gasp at how sensitive, at how  _real_  everything felt, "that such notions are unbefitting of a lady of Asgard. We should, perhaps,  _remove_  the cause of such symptoms, yes?"

"No," she grits out, her vision beginning to darken even as the pleasure rose through her once more. "Please—"

— _stop-pleaseletgo-pleaseletmebreathe-Iwilldoanythingjust_ —

"—spare him."

"Spare him!" Thanos laughs. "Your world in the balance and you bargain for one man. You're a  _conundrum_ , Thorsdóttir."

A whine escapes her. "Please—"

"Give in to me," Thanos suddenly says. "I'll reward you beyond your wildest imaginings. You can have your Clint Barton and anything else you wish." His promise would have meant a lot more if he was letting her breathe. "I'll show you how it can be," his hand loosens then, and her lungs scramble to suck in a loud breath, coughing as she forces her abused throat to widen and let the air pass, "if you just give in to me." He digs Clint's fingers into the flesh of her hips as Clint's body moves faster against her, angling his thrusts—

For a moment, her world whites out entirely as her body shudders with orgasm, and in those precious few seconds, she forgets about Thanos, knowing only that the cock fucking her through climax belongs to Clint—the man she's had fucking complicated feelings for since Day One of their meeting. And it felt  _so_.  _Fucking_.  _Good_.

When her body finishes calming down, she opens her eyes and sees the bright blue that heralds Thanos's control over Clint's body. "No?" he murmurs. "Very well then."

The scene suddenly changes.

They're on a chair now, Anna hovering above Clint with her thighs spread on either side of his body, her hands on his firm biceps for support as she sank over and over into his lap. There's a slight curl on Clint's lip that she'd seen twice before—once when she hit her first bullseye from an impressive hundred-yard distance, and the other when she tripped avoiding one of his silly tripwires, somehow launched herself through the nearby window and earned a total of twenty-one stitches all over her body. When he looks up at her now, the tell-tale blue of mind-control is nowhere to be found, leaving the familiar blue-grey-shaded eyes she'd become so familiar with.

"Damn, you're amazing," Clint pants, moving mindlessly against her. "The hell have we never done this before? But seriously, the handcuffs—get them off."

' **No. Move.** '

"No," she obeys, her hips still rising and falling as she drags her fingers over the restraints that kept him from touching her. The ones around his ankles rattle noisily.

"Anna," he says in a warning tone that sends a thrill through her, one that had her rubbing her crotch into his and groaning as her arousal spikes higher. "I wanna touch you."

' **No.** '

"No."

He leans up, teeth nipping at the lobe of her ear. "C'mon," he groans. "I can't get off like this. You're just torturing me."

' **He should be patient.** '

"Be patient," she tells him, dipping down firmly and clenching her muscles around him, drawing out a long moan from his throat. "I'll get you there." She licks a bead of sweat off his chest and rolls her eyes up to see him looking at her, his eyes blown dark with hot desire. "Promise."

"Jesus Christ," he breathes, jerking up helplessly. "I could come to that look on you."

' **Why doesn't he?** '

"Why don't you?" she asks, bending back and bracing herself on his knees.

Clint's eyes trails down her body, tongue peeking out to lick at his lips. "Think I will," he answers hoarsely, bucking into her. His eyes dart to her breasts when they bounce, and he starts moving in earnest. "Holy fuck," he rasps, eyes squeezing shut briefly as she tosses her head back and mewls. "C'mere," he beckons in a gruff voice that has her obeying instantly, letting him press his lips to hers roughly as he continues to fuck her. The handcuffs clink and clatter while he tries his best to reach for her, and she laces her fingers through his and keeps his hands still. He tightens his fingers around hers as she leans in to press her chest against him and suck a path up to his ear, making him groan and speed up his pace.

' **Do it.** '

"So good," she sighs, hearing his breath catch at the words. "Can you come like  _this_ , Clint?"

"God yes," he hisses, teeth nipping at her jaw before he kisses her again.

"Then do it," she moans against his lips, "inside me, Clint." She squeezes down on him, and Clint jerks, falling out of his rhythm. "Oh damn," she purrs, "I forgot a condom."

"Shit!" he gasps, moaning brokenly and shuddering as he came inside her. "Anna, holy  _fucking_  hell!"

' **Kill him.** '

Still moving against him, Anna snaps her hand forward quickly, driving it forcefully into his neck. Clint's eyes pop open as he chokes, the handcuffs rattling as he struggles to get free and stop her. Running her fingers up his chest, Anna pants as she cups his cheeks gently, twisting his head sharply until she heard a snap.

She comes then, yelling his name into his broken neck and pumping her hips against his to prolong the sensations running through her.

' **Good** ,' Thanos says from behind her. ' **Very good.** ' And then she comes back to her senses, abruptly feeling the ache between her thighs, the warm foreign liquid still spurting from the cock buried inside her, and the sweat rolling down her back as she stares at Clint's dead body, remembering how she'd—

Anna screams, jerking away, only to fall short as her wrists and ankles caught on the handcuffs.

No. No,  _she_  was handcuffed to the chair now, locked into place against the man she'd just killed mid-orgasm.

"Let me go," she sobs, hovering over Clint and doing her best to keep from touching him. Not out of disgust for his dead body, but in shame.

And fear. Because Thanos could do it, couldn't he? He could have Clint sit in a chair and use her own hands to snap his neck just as easily as he'd had her do here. With Clint under mind-control, the handcuffs wouldn't even be needed to hold him steady.

' **How many times has that been, Lady Thorsdóttir?** ' Thanos asks mockingly. ' **Have you been keeping count?** '

One-hundred and thirty-seven. She's killed her mother, Uncle Rhodey, Uncle Bruce and Uncle Steve ten times each. But Clint…

She's killed Clint forty-seven times now. Thanos had fixated on him the most because he was  _connected_  to Clint. He was showing her how Clint liked his food, how he trained, how he fucked, and the bastard wasn't even using any of  _her_  memories of him. Everything he's letting her see now is all Clint Barton. He dangled the information in front of her, knowing she could do nothing about it.

' **You kill everything you touch.** '

She does, doesn't she? She'd even almost killed herself before she was born, her umbilical cord apparently having wrapped around her neck. The doctor should never have seen it. If he hadn't, then only one life would've been taken had she died in utero—hers. Instead, she'd been born prematurely and single-handedly caused the death of three Avengers.

She's the  _stain_  on their legacy. She kills everything she touches.

' **Give in to me,** ' Thanos murmurs quietly. ' **I reward my faithful.** '

…no, he didn't. Anna knows he doesn't know, but every time he tortures her with pure pain, his memories leak forward for her to see. She knows well that he rewards no one—not even the most faithful of his minions.

It's tempting though. To give everything up and just play the submissive puppet. To let the son of a bitch pull all her strings.

"Anna." She yelps and jerks away in surprise, dragging the chair backwards and making Clint's body slump onto her.

"Uncle Thor," she chokes out, the restraints rattling as she sees him over Clint's head. Much like the day he saved her, he doesn't seem to notice the naked state she's in. Thor simply reaches forward to break the handcuffs off her wrists and helps her out of the chair, this time away from Clint's dead likeness.

"You'll be just fine, Anna," Uncle Thor tells her, detaching his red cape from his shoulder-plates and wrapping the coarse fabric around her shoulders, covering her up. "I'm here now."

' **What _is_  he?**' Thanos demands, his voice coming from all around her. ' ** _How_  does he exist? How can  _you_  do this?**'

Anna doesn't know either. Thanos had gone through her memories with a fine-toothed comb, but he never found the answer he was looking for. To be honest, Anna doesn't care how he was there—she's just grateful that even in her own mind, Uncle Thor was always be there for her, saving her when she needed saving.

"Trust me, Anna," Uncle Thor says, placing a kiss on her sweaty forehead. "I'll save you. Always."

' **He cannot save you! He is but a construct of your mind! You're only fooling yourself!** ' Thanos contradicts, but the doubt he'd planted is weeded out as Uncle Thor quietly smiles that 'we-know-something-the-Allfather-doesn't' smile of his.

"Never forget," he bids her, tucking her under his arm and leading her carefully out of the room, "you are a Stark, and your forefathers never knew how to give up."

' **Fool!** ' Thanos hisses as he got rid of her uncle the only way he knew how.

The world fades out as Anna starts screaming again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Sherlock Holmes** : Sorry, I couldn't help myself. I just had to put that in there.
> 
>  **Explicit Sex and Death part** : Thanos performs psychological torture on Anna by preying on the attraction she has for Clint Barton. He has her have sex with Clint while she's under mind-control, then kills him. Sort of a backwards situation of the scene where Loki taunts Black Widow during their confrontation in the detention level.
> 
>  **Disclaimer** : I took the part where Thanos taunts Anna with Clint and his death from the scene between Loki and Black Widow in the detention level, and so therefore do not really own it. Except the sex part of it all—that wasn't in the movie. And also, the part where Tony Stark pokes Bruce Banner and Steve Rogers reacts are taken from the scene when Iron Man, Hulk and Captain America are talking in the lab, and so I therefore don't own it. The words, when arranged in…um, well, mostly in that order, belong to the screen writers of The Avengers 2012 movie.
> 
>  **Why did I use it?** To make it clear that in my AU of The Avengers 2012 movie, everyone stays as in character as I can keep them. Here, they are still the same characters we watched in the movie, but they're now reacting to the news that Loki isn't the bad guy and that Thanos is the real bad guy who's already controlling Anna's body, holding her mind captive, and effectively turning her into a hostage that Tony—just him for now—is trying to save because he knows that she's a time-traveler, and that she's their best bet in saving the world and winning the fight against the alien invaders.
> 
>  **Anna and Clint** : This is more of a psychological thing too. It's not torture, but her attraction to Clint Barton is weird by normal social standards. Although my muse and I say that it's all because of Anna's daddy issues, I'll get into the why this pairing later. Way later—like, after-the-AU-part-of-the-movie-is-done later.


	6. to learning from loki

Stark's words stirs up a brief clamoring of opinions between everyone in the room, and Loki will admit, Stark's knowledge of the girl's time-traveling activities is not something he'd expected to hear, especially since his savior bore a great resemblance to man now confronting him. Due to their similar features, Loki had concluded that she'd obviously come from Stark's bloodline—though she was perhaps not yet grown or born, if the lack of full recognition from the man with the glowing chest was an indication—and he'd vowed to not speak of the matter, knowing full well that the mere idea of time-travel would tempt the mortals into learning all they could from her. Such actions could permanently curse them all with the future she had come to change.

No. Best to leave the issue alone, he'd decided.

But Stark's question had brought it to light anyway, and worse is that they had an audience. Couldn't the man have kept this between just the two of them? With his powers still unsettled, Loki would've stood a better chance of erasing the idea from just one mortal mind. But four? He might as well just erase every memory they'd ever experienced.

Well, perhaps that was why the man hadn't approached him alone. Curious though, how he could've come to such a conclusion,  _if_  he had come to  _that_ conclusion at all. If so, then it seemed that  _this_  mortal isn't as stupid as most of his peers.

The unprecedentedly intuitive man grins smugly and takes Loki's reaction as a compliment to his guessing prowess. "I knew it. Spill, Reindeer Games. What's up with Anna-girl?"

 _A bluff_ , Loki realizes too late, and he chastises himself for falling prey to Stark's act. Underneath the loud, flamboyant attitude is a brilliant and clearly devious mind, and Loki swears never to forget the moment Anthony Stark managed to trick him and earn his esteem.

Feeling both chagrined at his blunder and impressed at Stark's successful ploy, Loki cautiously chooses what to tell them. "All I may safely say is that Lady Anna used magic to free me from Thanos's possession, and that magic bore my unique signature. Seeing as how I've never met her before in my life and therefore could not have given her any of my magic before or while Thanos held me captive, I could only conclude that I had or would have done such a thing in the future,  _after_  Thanos leaves my body."

"That was like the end of a really long thesis paper," Stark says randomly, and Loki could only get a vague impression of what he'd meant by that comment. "What else? C'mon, that can't be it!"

"Is this seriously happening?" Romanoff questions, her brows furrowed. "We're actually talking about a  _time-traveler?_ "

"Why didn't you bring this up during the meeting?" Coulson also asks, his thumbs pressing at his phone. Stark instantly darts around the table and snatches the device out of the agent's hands.

"Don't!" Stark snaps, looking down and fiddling with the other man's phone before looking sternly at both S.H.I.E.L.D. members. "You're here because I'm letting you hear this."

"Excuse me?" Coulson hisses with narrowed eyes.

"What do you think Fury's going to do if he hears about this?" Stark hisses back.

"Interrogate her," the agent replies instantly. "She has information about future events that we can—"

"No, Phil," Romanoff cuts in quietly, staring at Stark searchingly. "Fury isn't going to interrogate her, is he?"

Stark's jaw clenches in anger, though he doesn't answer her. Instead, he turns to Loki. "Do you know who she—?"

"Stop," Loki shakes his head. "I'm bound by magical oath to speak nothing more about Lady Anna. The magic used to bring her here to our time was passed from the source to Lady Anna, which she then passed to me in order to free me from Thanos's control. As that source appears to be myself, or at least my future self," Loki amends quickly, "any information I discover regarding the time-traveler must be kept to myself and no other, as it risks her purpose in returning to the past."

Stark blinks, absorbing the statement, and then leans forward. "How? How does all that work?"

Loki hides how taken aback he is at the level of interest Stark conveys, and constructs his words with great consideration. "Time is akin to a pond full of leaves. If—"

"Oh no," Stark declines. "Please no zen-nature metaphors. I hate those."

Loki bites back a laugh. "You're much like Thor." And surely enough, his brother has a look of dread etched onto his expression. "Very well, life is not unlike a game of chess. To a traveler hailing from the future, the game is already over and one side has already won." Loki gives them a moment to see it in their mind's eye. "Now we can assume that the traveler is the player who lost the game. In traveling to the past, the player is undoing the choices that led to their defeat, stopping where they believe they began to lose. There, we can assume that by stopping at a certain point, the player has amassed the key pieces they believe they need to win. However, once the game starts again, every decisions the player makes anew is contingent upon specific rules—rules that had not been in place the first time around."

"What are the rules?" Stark asks before Loki can finish his sentence.

Loki pauses to think about how this could affect Lady Anna's purpose, but finds no harm in allowing them to know the rules, at the very least. "The first is golden, and can't be overcome—tell no mortal of their future."

"Why?" Coulson asks immediately.

"Self-fulfilling prophecies," Stark suggests intuitively.

"Indeed," Loki nods. "Time-traveling is generally considered to be 'cheating,' you see, and therefore, should Lady Anna inform a mortal about the future they face, it causes  _that_  future to inevitable."

"Like a safety net," the one known as Bruce Banner analogizes, "of sorts."

"Yes," Loki agrees. "The time-traveler should be the one person who manipulates the events that will lead us away from defeat."

"Which is impossible," Coulson says, cutting off whatever Stark was about to say, "since that person is being possessed by a murdering psychopath. What's to say Thanos doesn't call one of us up there and tell us our fate?"

"Ah, but that's the thing," Loki replies with a grin. "Even if Thanos does speak of the future, it's not considered as cheating, simply because it was not Lady Anna who spoke of it."

Stark jerks forward eagerly. "Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait," he spits out in a rush. "Are you saying that we can  _grill_  Thanos about the future and he'd tell us because he doesn't know he can't cement the future that way?"

At that, Loki shoots him a withering look. "You think Thanos hasn't had enough time to realize that such efforts would be futile?"

"But what about the information that the cube would be at New York?" Romanoff asks. "She told us it would be there. Isn't that telling us the future?"

"It is," Thor speaks up, "but she told no one of their fate, did she?"

"Well, no."

"A loophole!" Stark declares, rubbing his hands together with a smile. "I love loopholes."

"Don't be hasty, my friend," Thor warns, glancing at Loki briefly. "The situation at hand is challenging. Any information we collect from his vessel may take us down a path that leads to our defeat. If we're not careful, those who did not die in Lady Anna's time might be killed now. This is why we need  _Lady Anna's_ guidance, not the misleading words of a treacherous and dangerous enemy."

"So what you're saying is without this Lady Anna leading us by the nose, those who didn't die in the future she came from could die now instead," Banner mutters sardonically. "That's…great."

"No," Coulson frowns. "What he's saying is that without that girl, it won't matter what we do. We're still going to lose against Thanos."

"Don't be such a downer, Agent," Stark says, rolling his eyes. "That's not what's going on."

"Oh?" the agent narrows his eyes at his fellow mortal. "Enlighten me, then."

"The game's been undone," Stark begins, impressing Loki even more for going directly for the heart of the other man's problem. "So we may have lost somewhere down the line, but he," he points at Loki, "is the…the reset button, the start of our do-over."

"English, Mister Stark. Normal people's English," Coulson amends, "not  _your_  English."

Stark grunts. "Loki's chess analogy. Anna-girl is our side's player, and our side lost. Coming back here, she un _did_  the moves that made us lose and…what was the word? Amassed? Yeah, she amassed the pieces she needs to win."

"Loki," Romanoff states quickly.

"Exactly! Thank you!" Stark draws everyone's attention again, so no one notices Loki look down as he suddenly feels like he's… _important,_ in a way he never had been before. "She went back all the way to the moment we first saw her—when she exorcised Thanos out of Loki's body. That was her first move, but why?" He taps the table pointedly. "Because whatever happens in the future? Thanos's play was Loki—it always has been—and by setting him free  _now,_ in the middle of the game?"

"She gave us our fighting chance," Thor concludes, clapping a hand on Loki's shoulder and giving his brother a proud smile. Loki smiles back, and despite the lack of action, he feels more useful than he ever has in any battle he'd had to face at Thor's side.

"Yep," Stark nods.

"But what if she dies?" Romanoff asks suddenly, frowning along with Coulson.

"I'm kind of guessing that she can't," Stark replies, glancing at Loki knowingly, and Loki tilts his head in his direction.

"Lord Stark is correct. Though her soul  _can_  be lost to the cosmos and her body  _will_  age quickly should she conduct magic, Lady Anna is a traveler, and as such, immortality is bequeathed to her 'til the moment her purpose for returning is indubitably accomplished."

"I have a headache," Coulson sighs.

Stark sighs as well. "She can't be killed until we thoroughly kick Thanos's ass." He gives Loki a narrow-eyed look that is not quite a glare, clearly ignoring the way Coulson protests that he'd understood Loki's meaning and that he was no imbecile. But Loki is paraphrasing, of course. "Why can't you just say it like that?"

"Wait," Romanoff declares, pressing hand to her ear. Everyone turns to her attentively as she seemingly listens to whoever was speaking. "Yes, sir," she finally adds after a few moments, looking at Loki. "The girl is conscious," she tells him. "Director Fury is asking if you'd be willing to speak with her."

"Here," Stark says, toying with one of the glass panels that seems to be technological as well. Suddenly, a moving image of Lady Anna appears on the glass surface. She stands now where she had once been writhing on the cage floor, and with the exception of the slightly wrinkled uniform she had apparently stolen, the slight dampness on her forehead and the mess her large curls had become, her body shows no other signs of the torture she had undergone. And her eyes, when they open, are an obvious blue hue instead of the brown shade Loki had seen in the stilled image of her—a brown that matches the coloring of Stark's eyes.

"She has been broken," he murmurs, feeling conflicted. While he dislikes seeing the proof of her defeat and wishes she had been spared the horrors she must be witnessing under Thanos's hand, he is also grateful that he himself was no longer the one to bear the burden of being Thanos's vessel. 'Twas his fault, Loki knows, for acting too slowly in his attempt to send Thanos's energy to another dimension. It had given his former captor the chance to take Lady Anna.

"She can still be saved, right?" Banner asks him. "I mean, she saved you, Loki. There has to be some way to get Thanos out of her too."

"There is," Loki nods. "I know of several spells to exorcise the excess energy held within—"

"So why haven't you?" Stark demands, looking both confused and angry at the same time. For the first time, Loki wonders if the reason the man was so concerned was because he had actually deduced Lady Anna's parentage. If so, then even a master trickster had to tread carefully, for one with Stark's brilliant mind was clearly not to be trifled with, especially in regards to his heir.

"'Tis a complicated matter, Lord Stark." Appealing to the mortal's sense of entitlement might help a little, yes? "Thanos has lived a long life, and so his energy would be greater than Lady Anna's. The spell most powerful enough to exorcise Thanos requires the body to recognize its original soul, but I fear that instead of expelling Thanos, the body might not consider Lady Anna's energy as its own. In that case, Lady Anna's energy would become the excess, and the body would expel it instead."

"Huh." He doesn't show it, but Loki can tell that Stark is dejected. Perhaps he  _has_ deduced Lady Anna's true parentage—a dangerous prospect, considering the rule of traveling to a time before one's conception. There were reasons why such rules had been put in place. "Fine. Whatever. So what now? Are you going to talk to her?"

Loki almost frowns in distaste, sensing the trickery the request was laced with. The leader known as Nicholas Fury wished to see how Thanos would react to him, to see whether Loki could either trick or wring the details of Thanos plans from his borrowed lips. But that could also go both ways, as he perhaps wished to see how  _Loki_  would handle an encounter with his former captor, to determine how useful Loki could be against the warlord he'd earlier described.

In the end, Loki decides, "I see not how such an encounter would not be beneficial to us."

Stark sighs. "You know, you could just say, 'sure, I'd love to go see the bastard that possessed me and an innocent girl.'"

"The girl found a way onto the Helicarrier," Romanoff interjects. "She's not as innocent as you seem to think."

"Anna-girl invaded your home base," Stark smiles, openly expressing his amusement as the two agents subtly fought the urge to shift uncomfortably, "so your opinion about her is biased.  _I_  say that if the Purple Gas-Cloud hadn't turned her into his new joy-ride, she'd be standing right here with us, telling us how to stop the aliens before all hell can even hope to break loose."

Loki shakes his head at their petty fighting. "You'll forgive my manner of speech, Lord Stark," he replies dryly in response to Stark's previous statement. As he'd expected, the antagonism fades in the wake of his words. "I am a prince."

Stark grins widely. "Say Lord Stark again, would you?"

Coulson releases a huff of exasperation and amusement. "Loki, why don't you head down to the detention room with Agent Romanoff?"

Loki nods in agreement and follows the woman with blood-colored hair out the door, vaguely hearing Coulson tell his brother, Stark and Banner to follow him as he flexes his powers lightly. His body seems to have adjusted suitably enough to the additional amount of power running through his being, and part of him couldn't wait to test his new limits. The other part…

Well, he was going to face Thanos once more. The other part of him trembles.

* * * * *

Tony, Bruce and Agent arrives at the briefing room in time to see the show start. Fury, She-Minion and Capsicle are already there, and all five eyes don't even look away from the screen.

" _Hello, Loki,_ " Anna-girl's voice comes from the speakers hidden inside the table.

On-screen, Loki stops in the middle of the catwalk with a weird expression on his face. Tony doesn't really have a name for it, but he's seen it in the mirror since his return from Afghanistan. " _And so you have broken,_ " Loki murmurs.

A low hum travels the airwaves, and Anna-girl's lips stretch into a smile that tugs at something familiar in Tony's memories. " _I hope you aren't disappointed,_ " she says with a mocking pout. " _You know how persuasive the Overmaster can be_."

"Overmaster?" Tony scrunches his nose. "Really?"

"Shut it, Stark," Fury tells him.

" _Indeed_." Loki takes a step forward. " _Lady Anna, can you still fight him?"_

" _Nope_." Anna-girl shrugs. " _He brought out the big guns for me. Apparently I'm some sort of prodigy for the mind arts, so he had to loosen my inhibitions or some shit._ " She smiles sweetly, and again, the sight of it has Tony struggling to remember where he'd seen her before because he  _swears_  he knows her from somewhere. " _I was touched._ "

" _I am sorry_."

"What is he doing?" Fury growls. Tony rolls his eyes, but since the killjoy had told him to shut up, he vindictively doesn't explain that Loki—the wily bastard—is  _obviously_  poking at Anna's control, trying to see if she could slip them a clue like Loki had done once before.

" _Oh, don't be._ " Anna-girl tilts her head, still smiling. " _It's been very enlightening so far._ "

" _Don't give up, my lady,_ " Loki tells her, abruptly changing the topic. It irks a few certain people all-too-clearly. Meaning Fury and his neatly-pressed disciples. " _I_ _ **will**_ _do everything in my power to free you as you had me_."

Anna-girl's smile becomes sharper, her eyes narrowing dangerously. " _You can try_." She holds a hand out and somehow makes a ball of gold and pinkish light flicker to life above her palm. " _Thanos is teaching me a lot of your neat little tricks, dear mischief-maker. I wonder how much magic it would take for my soul to turn as black as your shadow._ "

Tony doesn't bother hiding his smug smile, because he'd totally called it. Now they know that she was  _learning_  magic.

" _Thanos will never let you go_ —" Loki looks pained for a second, "— _just as he would not have let me go_."

" _That's true_. _But you know what?"_ Anna-girl stands from the small bench she'd been perched on and begins walking towards Loki. " _He likes me a lot better than he liked you._ "

" _Indeed?"_ Loki shifts, spreading his feet wider as if preparing for an attack.

" _Indeed,_ " Anna-girl mocks, stopping inches from the glass door. " _You see, he_ _ **showed**_ _me what he did to you_ —" and at that Loki rears back, looking aghast, "— _and honestly? That was_ _ **nothing**_ _compared to what he had to do to me._ "

That seems to make something in Loki snap. " _Truly?"_ he sneers. " _And what, pray tell, did he do to you that was worse than the tortures he had me endure?"_

"Romanoff, get—"

"No, don't!" Tony snaps, annoyed yet again. Fury stops and gives him a narrow-eyed look that might have been a glare, but only made him look weird. "Just watch."

"…never mind, Agent Romanoff. Stay where you are." Fury puts his hand down. "You better be right about this, Stark."

Tony snorts. "Please. This is  _me_  we're talking about."

On the screen, Anna-girl's smile had returned. " _Well, for one—he never touched my body. Not like he did yours, Loki Laufeysson._ " Beside Bruce, Thor hisses and clenches his fists angrily, his anger turning his face red.

" _And so what horrors has he made you think you've done?"_ Loki scoffs, trying and failing to not show how her words were affecting him. " _Did you pierce the heart of your father? Crush your brother with his own weapon? Strangle your mother until life faded from her eyes? Rape and butcher your closest friends?"_

"Loki…" The anger had drained completely from Thor now, and he was pale and appalled instead.

" _Tell me,_ _ **dear**_ _lady,_ " Loki hisses, his eyes actually flashing red. " _What frights has he made you do that he's not shown me?"_

" _I ate the one I loved the most_."

"Okay," Tony mutters as on-screen-Loki grimaces. "Gross."

Anna-girl rests a hand lightly on the glass, leaning in as if she was sharing a child's secret. " _I strapped him on our dining table, sat on his back and carved him by the joints_." Her other hand comes up and slices imaginary lines across her wrist, elbow and shoulder. " _And when he promised to kill me with his bare hands, I chewed on his fingers and sucked the marrow from his bones_."

"This can't be still PG," Bruce murmurs, and Tony doesn't blame him for looking disgusted. He himself could feel the bile rising at the back of his throat.

" _He begged for me to stop and let him go. He said he'd love me more, that he'd quit taking on jobs and stay at home and be with me. So I took a hammer and put a nail through his tongue to get him to stop talking. He_   _writhed underneath me, screaming, 'Anna, please, it's me, Cl—_ '  _Argh!"_ Anna-girl's eyes suddenly widen, briefly flashing to her normal brown color before turning back to the unnatural blue hue. Her body bows down, hand squeaking as it slid down the glass.

Through the revulsion he felt at the monologue, Tony chuckles. "Gotcha," he murmurs smugly, feeling proud and glad that Anna still had even a modicum of control over what Thanos could and couldn't say using her body.

" _So,_ " Loki drawls, smirking as he drops the act he had been playing, " _how goes your attempt to control the girl,_ _ **Overmaster**_ _?"_ Thor chuckles at the obvious taunt, relaxing as he realizes that Loki had been in control of the situation all along.

" _She has her mother's unbreakable spirit._ " The idiot possessing Anna-girl's body laughs and straightens up. " _And her father's impertinence._ "

Loki smirks. " _A trying combination, I am sure_."

" _It is,_ " Thanos agrees unexpectedly. " _I've never had a more difficult host._ "

Tony notices Thor twitch at the dig against Loki, but the dark-haired god doesn't even seem to notice the insult. " _She'll never succumb to you_."

" _Perhaps,_ " Thanos allows. " _But I'm learning from my mistakes as I never have before. She's a marvelous teacher, your Lady Thorsdót—_ " Again, Anna-girl's body seizes, cutting Thanos off.

The table suddenly rattles as Thor launches himself off his chair and out of the room. Loki turns sharply to look at the camera. " _Damn!"_ he exclaims, running off and disappearing from sight.

Tony takes his cue from there and drags Bruce up with him. "C'mon!" he says, rushing after the so-called god of thunder. "Party's this way!"

* * * * *

When the detention room fades from her view again, Anna finds herself back where they had left off.

Thanos hadn't been lying to Loki. The bastard really had been showing her all the things he'd done to the second prince of Asgard—from the mental tortures to the physical. The physical had proven more effective on Loki, especially when Thanos threw him into what seemed to be a lava pit.

But beyond the horror stories that summed up Loki's time as Thanos's esteemed guest…

Tiny balls of lights flicker to life above her palm, swirling around like tiny rainbow-colored fireflies. Across her, Thanos hums proudly. " **Very good, Anna** ," he tells her. " **Very good indeed**."

Hesitantly, Anna looks down at her creation, and smiles as well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually skipped a lot of context by taking out a good portion of Anna's POV, because if I put it in here, then the story would start to focus on Anna herself instead of the Avengers. It's not that I hate Mary Sues, but I do know when the story shouldn't focus on Anna or her sufferings unless it provides real progress to the story. Besides, we can make a story out of that angle if I ever write a sequel.
> 
>  **Overmaster** : This is one of Thanos's canon titles. I discovered it in Thanos's page at comicvine-dot-com.
> 
>  **Anna eating Clint** : This is part of Thanos's strategy, because the arrogant bastard needs her to be submissive long enough to dangle a more enticing activity than torturing/killing Clint in her face: a respite from mental torture and, as seen above, learning magic. That one will be in the next few chapters.


	7. to unraveling the threads

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The meanings of the terms from Steve's POV can be found at the bottom note. But if you're too lazy to scroll up and down the page, then you could just Google them as you read. ;)

_She's a marvelous teacher, your Lady Thorsdót—_

The words return to him over and over, taunting him as he rushes through the metal hallways of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s floating ship. It was no hardship for him to complete the unfinished word, a word that sent a thrill of excitement and glee and sorrow and fury through him all together.

 _Thorsdóttir_.  _Thor's_  daughter. His  _daughter_ , _his_ progeny.

And with her brown locks and fair skin and attractive features, Thor has no doubts as to whom his child's mother could— _would_ —be.

Jane. His lovely, beautiful, brilliant Jane Foster. By the Nine Realms, but never had another mortal bewitched him so—and the best part there was that Jane is no witch. She believed not in magic the way Thor had accepted it eons ago, but he knows that she was well on her way. Every Midgardian morning and night, he would go to the edge of the Bifrost, always when his princely duties could wait, to simply ask Heimdall what was happening with his lovely Jane.

Oh, how he missed her so.

And now a  _child_ …

He is suddenly so grateful to his brother and Steve Rogers and Tony Stark. Without them, he would never have learned of the Lady Anna's time-travel, and he would never have thought that it were possible for him to become a fath—

"Oof!"

"Brother!" Loki's voice cries against his shoulder, and Thor couldn't fathom why his brother was grappling with him, forcing him back and away from where the Lady Anna Thorsdóttir is being held. "Brother, stop and think!" Loki hisses into his ear. "You said it yourself—Thanos will misguide us!"

 _He had said that, hadn't he?_  Thor remembers as he stopped struggling and looked at Loki. "Do  _you_  believe he has misguided us?" Thor asks him, gripping his brother's shoulders and searching his eyes for the answer. Loki hesitates, and that was all Thor needed to see. "We  _must_ help her," he declares, pushing Loki away carefully, only for his brother to latch onto his wrist and pull him back.

"I understand," Loki says urgently as the pounding feet of their comrades echoes down the corridor, "but we must inform the others—the director, especially—of her new status before they do something foolish, or worse discover  _when_  she comes from. The other mortals may now know of her true lineage, but their leader must not. Stark was right," he adds, "the man will not ask questions. Not at once."

He understands what Loki was implying at once. This invasion is an act of war, and wartime  _always_ brought prisoners, such as Thanos's vessels—first Loki, now Lady Anna. The mistake had been letting Nicholas Fury know that Thanos was the mastermind behind the assault, though there was truly no choice there, as it was a necessary truth to clear Loki of the suspicion unfairly cast on him. But if the mortal leader discovers that Thanos's presence inside Lady Anna would allow them to learn of future events, then he would do everything in his power to know what he could. Including…

Well. Thor had fought many a battle over the centuries, and he'd captured many enemy commanders in his campaigns, one of whom had been a Seer Of Things To Come. If Thor continues to act foolishly, then he may just put his daughter in that Seer's position.

The thought is sobering, and it brings him back to his proper senses. "You're right, brother," he allows, relaxing in Loki's hold. "Let us rejoin our allies. I wish to make myself heard." And oh, but how selfish it was of him to refuse the idea of someone so dear to him suffer the way the daughter of another man had suffered under his own hands. If Nicholas Fury were even half the brute he had been during those days…

No. No, he wouldn't  _dare_  lay a hand on Lady Anna. Thor would make sure of it.

"And Thor?" Loki adds, squeezing his arm slightly to recapture his attention. Thor turns to him as the others appeared, and his brother whispers his next words in the Old Tongue. "If this is to work, then we must take away the assumption that she is your  _direct_  descendant."

…damn. That takes away the strongest of his options. A distant descendant was not something to take lightly, but it was a less powerful statement than that of immediate family members, especially in the eyes of a king like the Allfather.

Then again, Nicholas Fury wasn't a king, and having had no contact with anyone else from the Realm Eternal, then he couldn't have learned of the most intricate practices kept by Asgardian royalty, could he?

"Worry not, brother. I do know how to mislead someone," Thor replies in the same language, clapping a hand over his brother's shoulder. "After all, there is a reason why 'twas you and not I who was blamed for the darker tint of Lady Sif's once-flaxen hair."

The shocked disbelief that crosses Loki's face when he finally revealed the most precious of his many secrets is one Thor would treasure for centuries to come.

" _Thor!"_ Loki shouts indignantly as Thor breezes past the others.

"Come, my friends," he says quickly, hurrying away from Loki's wrath. "We have much to discuss."

* * * * *

It had taken him a while, but the purple bastard finally manages to find one of her best-kept weaknesses. Folding her legs, Anna lowers herself to sit beside a young Loki as he learns the art of magic from Odin himself.

She hadn't expected that. Ever since she met him, Odin had been a real asshole to her. He'd commended Uncle Thor's loyalty to his friends, but didn't like that her uncle asked for nothing in return for his kindness. He'd disapproved of his son's adoption of her, but accepted Anna as a member of his household. He'd allowed her to roam to her heart's content, but then locked her into a useless set of Asgardian lessons after she found too many hidden rooms, including Loki's cave underneath the palace. And even though she'd passed his stupid, tiring tests to see if she was worthy of staying in Asgard, he'd kicked her back to Earth for being mortal and refused to let her have one of Idunn's apples to turn her into an immortal.

In her eyes, Odin was a PMS-prone asshole. Period.

So seeing him on the ground beside Loki, teaching him the intricacies of magic…

It's  _weird_.

"There is magic in all of us," Odin clichés, "because there is a soul in all of us. There our magic rests dormant, though it grows as we grow. And as time ages us, its power unfolds and envelops us, helping us determine our part in the universe."

Anna's heard the spiel before. During her time in Asgard, she'd sat in with the other young noblewomen at Odin's insistence, and eventually, the subject captured her attention. She never got to cast any magic though, since the tutor believed that her mortal soul couldn't  _possibly_  bear the strain of cosmic energy and succumb to the call of the inky darkness peeking through Yggdrasil's roots.

Ooh, how she'd  _hated_  that bitch.

Now though…

"…to conduct the energies of the cosmos through our souls," Odin was saying, moving his right hand over his left in a circling motion, then pulling sparkling lights from the air that turned into the form of a soaring bird above his open left palm.

Loki's eyes widens in delight. "Can I try, father!"

Odin gestures to him. "Of course, my son. Close your eyes." Loki did so, and Anna follows suit. "As you take a breath, feel the magic in it. 'Tis not just air to fill your lungs, it's magic to feed your life-force."

'Well, what do you know?' Anna thinks rhetorically, feeling her lungs tingle as air fills it up.

"Hold that breath," Odin instructs, and Anna obeys. "Feel the magic as it spreads from your lungs—"

 _The oxygen you take in gets stored in your alveoli, and from there enters your bloodstream_.

"—and rushes through your body. It keeps you alive in the subtlest way. This is the easiest magic anyone can do. Now," Odin adds, "feel the magic in your hand. There is energy there."

"I feel it," Loki whispers. Anna agrees with him and hopes she wasn't just imagining things.

"Simply feel it there for now," Odin says. "Savor it. Know it. Recognize how it feels to hold that energy in your palm." And she does—she recognizes it. It's soft and intangible but  _right_   _there,_ and  _god,_ but learning had never been more amazing. It seems like forever until he spoke again, but when he does, Odin's voice comes soothingly. "Open your eyes."

Anna opens her eyes to the world again, and the first thing she sees is Loki. Her jaw drops, because above Loki's palm is a gold animal, its four legs and the tip of its slowly swishing tail a pale green color.

"How fitting," Odin muses. "A fox for my clever son."

As Loki grins proudly and giggles, large hands grip her wrist, and that's when she realizes that she too had conjured something up. But whatever it was disappears in a whirl of gold and shadowy mist after Thanos grabbed her.

" **Very good** ," Thanos says to her as the memory fades out to be replaced by another. Loki looks older now, but Odin is still his teacher, and as they sat on the same ground, Thanos releases her hand. " **Again**."

* * * * *

"Can someone explain to me what the hell that was all about?" The big cheese (Fury,  _Director_  Fury) demands as everyone takes their seats. "And take it from the top."

"What top?" Thor asks, frowning.

"It means to start from the beginning," Dr. Banner explains.

"Why not just say then?" Thor grumbles, and Steve quietly agrees with him. Although that particular expression was familiar to him, most modern words tend to turn him around, so Thor's exclamation is a sentiment he shares.

"Thor, please," Agent Romanoff cuts in, and Thor nods in acquiescence. "Loki, would you please tell us what happened?"

"Very well," Loki says, lacing his fingers together. "During my…conversation with him, Thanos claimed that his new host is a member of the House of Odin through my brother."

Steve frowns. "What? When did he say that?"

"He called her Thorsdóttir," Mr. Stark (not Howard, never Howard again) answers in his usual nonchalant tone. "Like in Iceland. They don't have surnames like Rogers or Banner there. The surnames come from the father or mother's name, like if you had a son or daughter, their last name would be Stevensson or Stevensdóttir. I guess Asgardians have the same practice?" he adds, looking at the brothers.

"Indeed," Loki nods to Mr. Stark. "I assume Thanos attempted to say this in order to cause us further confusion."

"There is no confusion," Thor declares firmly, staring pointedly at Director Fury. "The Lady Anna has been marked as my descendant, and we shall treat her as such."

"Thor," Loki sighs. "I know we have had our dalliances with mortals in times long past, but we do not know her lineage for certain—"

"Then until we do, we act as if she is!" Thor demands, slamming a fist into the table to make his point. "I will not risk it! Not if she is of my line!"

"Agreed," Mr. Stark nods, shooting a pointed look at Director Fury that has the man snapping his mouth shut and nodding as well.

"Agreed," the director says reluctantly. Thor relaxes and smiles at his brother winningly, as if he hadn't just coerced a powerful man into doing what he wanted.

"That's it?" Steve finds himself asking. "You aren't gonna investigate the claim or…something?"

"How?" Mr. Stark asks dryly. "Take some blood and run a DNA test?" A  _what-now_  test? "Anything we can to do investigate requires opening the cage. We don't know what Thanos would do if we do that. Loki can't risk touching him—what if he can go back in him and take over Loki again? Then we'd be back at square one and everything Anna-girl did would be for nothing. Hell, we don't even know if she'd survive an exorcism!"

He's right, of course. "It just feels like we're sitting here and talking about doing something but nothing's actually being done," Steve says to them, because this isn't like the war councils he used to participate in, where they'd give all the facts, lay out a plan and then follow through with it. Here and now? They didn't even know what they  _wanted_  to do.

"The situation is complicated, Captain," Director Fury speaks up, as if reading his mind. "Things aren't as cut and dry as World War II. We're talking about an alien invasion—it's unprecedented."

"Alien or not, it's still an invasion," Steve argues, trying to hold back most of his frustration. "We know where they're coming from, we know where they'll be, so let's put people out there to—"

"Die?" Mr. Stark butts in cynically. "Don't be naïve, Cap. We already can't evacuate New York and you want to put more people on ground zero? Do that and Thanos will get what he wants."

"Oh, I suppose you have a plan then?" Steve demands.

Mr. Stark shrugs. "I do."

That takes the wind out of Steve's sails. "You do?"

"Yep."

"Care to share with the class, professor?" Dr. Banner asks.

Mr. Stark points at him. "Professor Stark. I like that. Not as much as Lord Stark, but—"

"Tony," Dr. Banner sighs.

"Fine," Mr. Stark says, "but only because you called me 'Tony.'" He inhales exaggeratedly and begins speaking. "Far as we know, Barton's coming in with a team. I say we let him come in."

"You don't wanna shoot him out of the sky?" Agent Romanoff asks, her voice hard despite her obvious confusion.

"Psh, no," Mr. Stark waves his hand dismissively. "Like I  _want_  you to kill me." Agent Romanoff relaxes, looking more amused now as she listens. "Anyway, we stop them from sabotaging us, get Barton, confirm where the Tesseract's going, and head on over there. We're what now? Two hundred miles from the East Coast?"

"Thereabouts," Agent Hill confirms.

"And the carrier can cross that in at least an hour," Mr. Stark continues. "And even if we can't make it back all the way, I can at least fly out in the suit, grab the cube and hightail it out of there before the portal can open. Problem solved."

Steve gapes at him. "You can't seriously expect that plan to go off without a hitch," he protests.

"I don't," Mr. Stark answers, giving him an incredulous look. "That plan isn't a plan—it's an outline. You don't plan for these things, cap, that's unrealistic. An outline's much more useful. Plans are exhaustive."

"Plans are exhaust—" Steve stops right there, half-seething, because good Lord, not even Howard had been this egotistic back in the day. "Son, that plan is all wet and you're—"

"Don't call me 'son.'"

"—going to risk your own life doing that!"

"Exactly."

"Are you actually trying to bump yourself off? Wait, what?" Steve paused, glancing at the others and seeing their surprised faces, so he probably hadn't misheard. "Did you just say—?"

"Yep," Mr. Stark nods, leaning back and linking his fingers behind his head.

Steve takes a moment to process it, and it doesn't quite add up. Unlike Howard, Tony is a vain, self-centered man and Steve had agreed with S.H.I.E.L.D.'s assessment of him the moment they exchanged more than two words. So where did this sudden willingness to risk his life come from?

"You  _are_  trying to get yourself killed. Good Lord, are you  _insane?_ "

Mr. Stark rolls his eyes. "I'm not trying to get myself killed, I'm  _lowering_  the potential  _body count_  you seem keen on escalating."

"I'm not keen on escalating anything like that!"

"Tony," Dr. Banner says, looking warily at Mr. Stark.

It seems to draw S.H.I.E.L.D.'s attention to him instead. "You wanna think about removing yourself from this environment, doctor?" Agent Romanoff asks, and it reminds Steve about the withdrawn man's…disposition, as well as Thanos's plan to unleash the Hulk against S.H.I.E.L.D.

Dr. Banner releases a huff of disbelief. "I was in Kolkata," he tells her. "I was pretty well-removed."

"You were," Agent Romanoff agrees. "But now you're here for Thanos to manipulate."

"And you've been doing what, exactly?" Dr. Banner asks, raising an eyebrow.

Agent Romanoff seems to bristle. "You didn't come here because I batted my eyelashes at you."

"Yes, and I'm not leaving because suddenly you get a little twitchy."

"You," Director Fury says firmly, "need to step away."

"Why  _shouldn't_  the guy let off a little steam?"

Steve glares at Mr. Stark, aghast at how easily the man could entertain the idea of putting the whole ship in danger. "You know damn-well why—back off!"

Mr. Stark narrows his eyes at him. "Oh, I'm starting to want you to  _make_  me."

That's when Steve remembers how the man fights his battles. "Oh yeah," he mocks, sick of Stark's arrogance when all he really did was hide in a metal suit as he pretends to fight the hard battles. "Big man in a suit of armor." Stark's jaw ticks, and Steve feels a perverse sense of pleasure in causing that reaction. "Take that off and what are you?"

Without missing a beat, Stark replies, "Genius billionaire playboy philanthropist."

From behind Stark, Steve sees Agent Romanoff raise her eyebrows and shrug in agreement. Somehow, it makes him angrier. "I know guys with none of that worth ten of you." Stark doesn't react, so Steve presses on further, aiming to hurt. "And I've seen the footage. The only thing you really fight for is yourself. You're not the guy to make the sacrifice play—to lay down on a wire and let the other guy crawl over you."

Stark rolls his eyes. "I think I would just  _cut_  the wire."

"Always a way out," Steve sneers. "You know you may not be a threat, but you better  _stop_  pretending to be a hero."

Stark rises to his feet and looks down at him, and abruptly, Steve remembers Bucky. Whenever his best friend found him lying in the gutters of Brooklyn, he would look down at him with the same assessing gaze, as if wondering why the hell Steve kept doing it to himself even as he leaned down to offer Steve a hand up. Moments like those, Steve had always thought of Bucky as a hero— _his_  hero—and it's so jarring that Stark could mimic the pose so accurately without any effort at all.

It pisses him off.

"A hero? Like you?" Stark's tone is full disdain, and those familiar brown eyes turn icy without a twitch. "You're a laboratory experiment, Rogers. Everything  _special_  about you came out of a  _bottle_."

Steve inhales sharply, hurt because it's true. Without the serum, he wouldn't be—couldn't be—the hero he had become. Indeed, everything that made him a hero  _had_  come from a bottle.

But he fights the ache away and gets up as well. "Put on the suit," he demands, because he's got nothing left to throw but his fists. "Let's go a few rounds."

Thor's laughter cuts of whatever Stark had to say. "You people are so  _petty,_ " he exclaims, and shame flushes through Steve when he realizes what he'd just said and done. Thor stands up, as if to emphasize his next words. "And tiny."

"Yeah, this is a team," Dr. Banner says sarcastically, once again reminding them of his presence.

"Agent Romanoff," Director Fury sighs, "could you escort Doctor Banner back to his—?"

"Where?" the doctor snaps. "You rented my room."

Director Fury has the grace to look repentant. "The cell was just in case you—"

"In case you needed to  _kill me,_ " Dr. Banner cuts him off knowingly. "But you can't. I know—I've tried."

Steve hears Stark hiss in displeasure, and when he looks at his old friend's son, there is pained empathy written on his face. Then and there, Steve thinks that maybe Stark wasn't  _completely_  a selfish jerk.

"I got low," Dr. Banner explains at the looks the others had given him. "I didn't see an end, so I put a bullet in my mouth and the other guy  _spit it out_."

Steve lowers his eyes, remembering that mutated as it was, the Hulk was a result of the same serum that made him into what he was now. If he put a bullet to his mouth, would he die? Or would he be…

God, he couldn't be.

"So I moved on," Dr. Banner adds, helping Steve distract himself away from such a horrible thought. "I focused on helping other people. I was  _good,_ until you people  _dragged_  me back into this freak show, and put everyone here at risk. You wanna know my secret, Agent Romanoff? You wanna know how I stay calm?"

"This is what he wants," Loki suddenly speaks up. "Look at this—we fight with each other."

The room quiets down as everyone realizes he was right.

Stark sighs loudly, massaging the bridge of his nose. "Let's take a breather," he suggests, and Steve latches onto that idea even as Fury began to protest.

"I agree," he says, earning a surprised look from Stark. He shrugs at the incredulous look he's given. "You were bound to have a good idea soon."

It isn't quite the peace-offering Steve had intended it to be, and Stark understands that because he sneers and pushes away from the table. "I'm heading back to the lab," he tells Dr. Banner, who nods and gets up as well.

"I should go check on the locator anyway," the scientist excuses, pausing to glance at Loki. "Would you like to come, Loki?"

Surprisingly, Loki agrees with a simple, "Yes," and rises gracefully. Wordlessly, Thor pushes away his chair away, and the three of them accompany Stark through the doors.

"Coulson, Romanoff," Fury states, and the two agents get to their feet and hurry after the entourage, leaving Steve alone with the director and Agent Hill. Suddenly, the bridge seems even bigger than it already was, and he felt much too alone as he remains seated at the once-full table.

How was it that he was the one who cares about what happens to the people onboard, and yet it was Stark who everyone follows after? Loki wasn't a surprise—he kept giving the billionaire impressed looks with every word that Stark said, and Thor was clearly happy to have his brother back and stuck to his side like a moll. Even Agent Coulson, whom Agent Romanoff claims is his biggest fan, had seemed eager to join Stark in the lab. And now that he thought of it, even Dr. Banner's instant camaraderie with Stark was a surprise. He was such a mild-mannered man, so how he got along with someone so irritatingly loud…

Then again, now that Steve was  _really_  thinking about it, Stark was the only one crazy enough to accept not only the good side, but also the destructive side of Dr. Banner. Steve had welcomed the human side, sure, but that apparently didn't mean anything when he had openly sided with S.H.I.E.L.D.'s standing about the 'other guy.'

Shame floods him. Of all the people on the ship, he and Dr. Banner had the most in common. Unlike the two gods and the trained operatives of S.H.I.E.L.D. and even the genius-born billionaire inventor, he and the doctor had been ordinary men turned extraordinary by science. Both had been members of the army—Steve as a soldier and Dr. Banner as a scientist. Both were superhuman, and thus outcasts of normal society. Both were behind the times, with Steve having been frozen in ice for seventy-years and Dr. Banner being on the lam from the military.

Both were enhanced by Dr. Erskine's serum.

 _The serum amplifies everything that is inside,_ Dr. Erskine had told him so long ago.  _Good becomes great. Bad becomes worse. This is why you were chosen_.

The fact that Dr. Banner turns into a destructive monster should be evidence of Dr. Erskine's words. But then why didn't Steve do what Dr. Banner did? Why didn't  _he_  turn back into the scrawny little Brooklyn boy trying to prove himself a man?

Perhaps it was the gamma radiation involved. Steve didn't know anything about it other than the fact that it was dangerous to have around, so maybe there was something there, something that allows Dr. Banner to turn back.

But if his bad had become worse, then why wasn't Dr. Banner the 'other guy' all the time? Didn't that mean that there were two parts there? The good and the bad? Or rather, the great and the worse?

 _A strong man, who has known power all his life, will lose respect for that power,_ Dr. Erskine had said, and from what Steve had gleaned from his file, Dr. Banner had been a respected scientist whose work contributed greatly to the scientific community, and he had been a very passionate man, especially about his work. And then his accident happened, he went on the run, and now he was a very reticent man, suggesting that his experiences while on the lam had contributed to his reserved persona. _But a weak man knows the value of strength, and knows compassion_.

A strong man and a weak man. Dr. Banner fit both categories now, and good Lord above, but even if the result of his accident  _is_  a green, mutated rage fiend, who was Steve to shun a large part of the man's qualities?

_Whatever happens tomorrow, you must promise me one thing—that you will stay who you are: not a perfect soldier, but a good man._

"Captain?" Agent Hill speaks up with a small frown. That's the only time Steve notices that even Fury had left the room, and if Hill had gone with him… "Are you okay?"

No. No, he wasn't. He'd made a seriously huge mistake, one that he had to atone for. But Steve is a man now—a  _soldier_ even—and he has to suck it up and act like it. "I'm fine, ma'am," he tells Agent Hill as he got off his chair. "Thank you."

"You know," she says almost kindly, "it won't always be like that."

Goodness, was he that transparent about his thoughts? Giving her a tight smile and a polite nod, he mutters another brief thanks and turns to the doors.

"The gym is on deck three," she adds.

"Thank you," he repeats again. But he hadn't planned on going to the gym. When he approached the director after hearing Dr. Banner and Stark's theory back in the lab, Fury had simply reiterated the reason he'd given to Steve when he recruited him for this mission. It's only thanks to Dr. Banner and Stark's earlier explanation that he realized the man had been lying to him from the get-go.

He should've known, really. Steve had been around Howard Stark long enough to know that the study and creation of new weapons-technology was both his talent and sole interest. If he had been involved in the Tesseract project, then it wasn't to create unlimited sustainable energy—it was to make what he'd always been good at making.

Weapons.

Fury's call to assemble and witness Loki's meeting with Thanos had prevented him for searching for answers, but he wouldn't let anything stop him from finding some now. Because after the chaotic mess their meeting had turned out to be, Steve knows he has a few apologies to make—starting with Dr. Banner and definitely including Tony Stark.

And where else best to start than finding out if both were right about Fury's secrets?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Icelandic names** : I Googled this, like every other reference in the story. See notes on Chapter 1 ;)
> 
>  **Big cheese** : the boss; an important or influential person.
> 
>  **All wet** : an erroneous idea or individual.
> 
>  **Moll** : a gangster's girl.
> 
>  **Disclaimer** : Every term that seems familiar was Googled, and is therefore not mine. Also, the part where the team fights each other verbally on the bridge is from the scene where…well, they all fight each other in the lab. I don't own it. The words, arranged in that order, belong to the screen writers of The Avengers 2012 movie.
> 
>  **Why did I use it?** Again, to make it clear that in my AU of The Avengers 2012 movie, everyone stays as in character as I can keep them.
> 
>  **Dr. Erskine's Quotes** : Those were taken from the Captain America 2011 movie, so I don't own them either.
> 
>  **The part about oxygen rushing through the blood stream thing**? That was me trying to give a bit of focus to Thor's claim (in his 2011 movie) that in Asgard, magic and science are the same. He says this to Jane while they're stargazing.


	8. to discovering the biggest secrets

"What is it?" Bruce asks as soon as the doors had closed behind everyone.

"I know what's going on now," Tony mutters, pacing the length of the room. "I've been wondering why you assholes put us all together, but now I see…"

"What is it you see, Mister Stark?" Agent prompts him when he kept quiet. It makes him realize that he wasn't actually saying his ideas aloud.

Turning to them, he points to Loki. "He's right," Tony begins. "That fight we had back there? Thanos wanted that to happen. Shit—I knew he was up to something big, but I didn't realize how  _big_ it really was until you said it," he ends, gesturing to Loki once more.

"You're still not making any sense, Stark," Natashalie tells him.

"It wasn't Fury, it wasn't you guys," Tony expounds, glancing at her and Coulson. "S.H.I.E.L.D. didn't put everyone together. Thanos did."

"What do you  _mean_  Thanos did?" Agent demands, clearly alarmed despite the steady look on his face.

Bruce's question came out in a calmer tone. "You mean he put everyone together? He knew about us before he came here?"

"Well, why else would he bother with the theatrics?" Tony more stated than asked. "Loki's powerful—Thanos could've made him steal the cube and wipe the entire project off your minds, right?" He glances to Loki for confirmation.

"It would take much of my magic to do such a thing to so many minds in one spell, but yes," the so-called god shrugs, "he could have done so with my powers."

Tony raises his hands up meaningfully. "So why let everyone know someone's coming?"

"He wished know his opposition," Thor answers, staring at the ground as he thought his words out. "Thanos is a warlord, and when a warlord wishes to invade another territory, he sends a patrol to scout ahead and test the defenses."

"But he used Loki," Tony points out. "Why? Why send someone who has greater value as—"

Loki snorts and cuts in with a bitter sneer. "Greater value? You overestimate my worth, Lord Stark. Thanos found no value in me.  _That_  is why he brought my body here."

"Not true," Tony refutes, counting it out on his hand. "You're immortal so your body can withstand more damage. You're powerful. You're a prince," that's when it all clicks together in his head, "so you have to know a lot about— Oh.  _Oh_."

"What?" Agent asks, furrowing his eyebrows.

"Thor."

"Me?" Thor blinks.

"What about my brother?" Loki asks.

"That's it. That, right there, is the reason he chose you—you're  _brothers_ ," Tony says to them, glancing between the two armored men.

Thor looks at his brother—who seems as lost as he was—and shakes his head. "Forgive us, Man of Iron, but we don't quite follow."

Tony sighs. It was times like these when he wishes he had telepathy, so he didn't have to waste time explaining the sitch to people.

…then again, he did like showing off how much smarter he was. His ability to solve any puzzle was the one thing he truly had for himself.

"Okay, think about it," he says, turning to Loki. "Why you? And for what? I stand by what I said, you're powerful and shit, so why send you on an errand any of his minions can do. Why show you off now? Why not later? I mean it can't just be to get the cube 'cause then he could've picked someone else—someone who he'd have an easier time breaking or even a minion of his."

"I only know the Tesseract was his target," Loki replies, though it looks like he's starting to get it too. Good. "If he were after something else, then I have not seen it."

"No, stop," Tony holds a hand up. "It doesn't matter what it is, but  _where_  it is." Loki blinks at him, still a little bit lost, so Tony helps him along. "What's the one place where you can get in and out of without anyone wondering why you're there?"

"I can go anywhere, really..." Loki paused and exchanged a glance of realization with Thor. "Asgard. Of course."

Tony raps a knuckle against the table. "Exactly. He wants something, and that something has something to do with Asgard and  _you_ ," Tony points to him, "were going to be the key to him getting there. He needed  _you_ ," he emphasizes again, "because you're an immortal prince with what? An unparalleled skill in—" He tries not to make a face when he says this, "—magic?"

"My brother  _is_  the greatest sorcerer in Asgard," Thor confirms. "And with his skill as a marksman, he is one of Asgard's most formidable warriors. Only one who knows how he fights can defeat him."

"And I'm guessing that's you, big guy," Tony turns his attention to Thor. "That's another reason why he had Loki make the pit stop to Earth. He _needed_ you to come here. With you on Earth, he has two options. Option one: he has Loki sneak away to Asgard, and with you here, there's no one there who can stop him. Option two: we stop the invasion and catch Loki before he can sneak off, and then you take Loki home with you. Either way? He still gets to Asgard." Thor swallows as he starts to understand what Tony's trying to tell them. "Loki," Tony says, "was bait for  _you_."

"Isn't that a bit too elaborate?" Agent asks, still frowning.

"No, it's not!" Tony exclaims, slapping the back of his hand against his palm. "It's brilliant. It's  _genius!_ "

"You sound like you admire him," Natashalie points out.

Tony snorts. "And you sound like you don't understand how complex this whole thing is," he replies. "Didn't I just say: don't plan, just outline? Thanos had it all outlined! He knew what he wanted, he had a list, and everything he wanted to do came together  _all_ because he got lucky enough to grab Loki!" He counts it out for them, "He wants to get back into Death's good graces. He wants the Tesseract to make him a god. He wants to get into Asgard. So  _if_  he still had  _Loki?"_

"We'd still be screwed," Natasha concludes, rubbing the bridge of her nose as she follows Tony's line of thought, "no matter what the outcome."

" _That's_  why Anna-girl went straight for Loki." Tony barks out a laugh. "He was the crux—the key—to Thanos's entire operation. By getting Loki here, he not only had access to the Tesseract, he also got Thor's attention, which is probably crucial to his plan to get to Asgard, and we can assume that whatever he's going to Asgard for is going to win him Death's affections…or something."

They absorb that for a moment.

"I see," Loki says. "It is indeed a…a brilliant strategy. But now I am free from his rule. The plan can no longer work."

"Not fully, no," Tony shakes his head in slight disagreement, tapping his fingers on the table. "Without you, he can't get into Asgard without getting stopped. Without your immortality, he'll get Anna-girl's body killed. And without your powers, he won't be as effective as he can be against the guards you have around the place. But he said he learned a lot of your tricks, right? But that would burn Anna-girl's body out before he can even reach Asgard, so it can't be smart to pursue that goal." Tony's just thinking aloud now, his mind already calculating the odds of Thanos winning now that he was in Anna's body. "Damn it. I can't do the equation unless I have all the variables and Anna-girl's too much of a wildcard."

And it's weird that Tony can't figure her out, because he can feel it sitting on the tip of his tongue and waggling around at the very front of his head, but no matter how hard he tries to piece it together, he can't solve the puzzle that is Anna-girl. Something was blocking him from getting the answer, and obviously, that something was magic. And  _obviously_ , being the one who had apparently sent Anna back to the past _and_ as the only person who  _could_  do magic on this boat, Loki would be the person to go to for answers.

Loki's being tight-lipped about her, however, so Tony couldn't rely on him for that. And from what Tony's seen, Thor stands where Loki does, so no help there either—especially now that she'd been claimed as Thor's kid.

But he  _knows_  he's missing something else. He could see the x in the grand equation, and it's the only variable he can't find an answer to, the only reason why he can't accurately predict what could happen.

And damn, but that both excites and scares him. It's been a while since he'd been so challenged by something human-based. People were typically predictable once he had a handle on their personality and thought-process, but the brief footage they have of her hadn't given him much insight into Anna-girl's personality, which is what made it difficult for him to predict a sure outcome for this situation.

Even Thanos got easier to see through after Loki gave up the warlord's background. He hadn't loved enough as a child—why else would he get hooked to the one entity who paid him any real attention?—and like many privileged people, he was fueled with power and driven by greed. He wants something so he takes it, and he's only bound by the parameters he sets on himself. And when he doesn't get his way, he blames the first person he can get his hands on.

But Anna-girl? She's a freaking mystery. Aside from the fact that she's a crazy-awesome hacker, a capable fighter, is apparently strong enough to break Thanos's control whenever he tried to say something about the future, and has some sort of connection to future-Loki that he chose  _her_  to send into the past, Tony has no other data to base her potential motives and actions on. Neither does he have any real basis for her background or intelligence or  _any_  skill set she could possibly have, so who knows what she's capable of? Who knows what tactics and ideas Thanos could be getting from her?

And—most important of all—why  _her?_  What made future-Loki pick her to come back and change the future?

 _That's_  what Tony wants to know most of all. Because despite the good-guy vibes he was letting out now, Loki's a manipulator, a god of mischief and deceit, so there had to be some deeper agenda, some  _selfish_  purpose—because if there's one thing humans and gods have in common, being selfish was it—he'd hoped to accomplish in sending  _Anna_  to do all this, instead of coming back and doing it himself.

Thor's voice breaks into his thoughts. "Unpredictability is a warrior's best advantage," the overly-muscled demigod says, shifting his feet and looking a little proud.

"Unless it doesn't benefit us," Loki counters dryly.

"I am no less proud of her," Thor shrugs.

"Right," Coulson exhales, now officially looking exasperated. "You keep thinking on it, Mister Stark, and if you've figured out anything else, let me know ASAP. In the meantime, we have at least four hours before Agent Barton comes, and we can expect them to arrive guns blazing. We need at least one of Thanos's people alive to confirm where the Tesseract will be, and I'd prefer that one person to be Agent Barton. We can expect them to try sinking this carrier, so we'll need to have everything heavy tied down and secure all the breakables just in case we can't stop them. Maybe have our people outfitted with the standard arms and lock down the armory too."

Tony nods, actually agreeing with the precautions. "Don't forget the glow-stick of destiny."

"We can't move it without the director knowing," Coulson says. "But just in case it gets overlooked," he adds, turning to Natashalie, "I trust you can secure the spear somewhere no one can easily find it?"

She shrugs. "I know the perfect place."

Coulson nods. "Then that's settled. Anything else?"

"Yeah," Tony says somberly, knowing that the next topic was too sensitive to ignore any longer. "What do we tell Fury?"

"About what," Fury's voice echoes through the room as the door slides open, "exactly?"

* * * * *

Steve stares down at the contents of the crate blankly, feeling the bitter disappointment well up in his throat. He should've known. He should've guessed.

He shouldn't have been so naïve.

Grabbing the rifle, he makes his way back to the lab, hoping Stark and the others were still there.

They were, and they had company.

"…doing, Mister Stark?" he hears Fury ask from two corridors away. The sound isn't at all muffled, so maybe someone left the door open, and Steve's hearing  _had_  increased exponentially since…well,  _that day_. It made it difficult for him  _not_  to eavesdrop on people, even at this distance.

"Um, kind of been wondering the same thing about you," Stark replies.

Fury sounded angry when he says, "You're  _supposed_  to be locating the Tesseract—"

"We are," Dr. Banner tells him, and Steve hurries along the last hallway. "The model's locked and we're sweeping for the signature now. When we get a hit, we'll have the location within half a mile."

"Yeah, and you'll get your cube back. No muss, no fuss—" Steve hears something beep as he finally reaches the hallway that leads to the lab, and through the glass walls, he sees Stark pull out a small device from his phone, "—hey, what's Phase Two?"

Somehow, Steve manages to time his entrance perfectly, breezing past the brothers, Dr. Banner, and Agents Coulson and Romanoff to slam the gun onto a tabletop. "Phase Two is S.H.I.E.L.D. uses the cube to make weapons," he declares, straightening up to face Fury full-on.

"Rogers," Fury sighs and walks toward him, "we gathered everything related to the Tesseract. This does not  _mean_ —"

"I'm sorry, Nick," Stark interrupts once more as one of the glass displays lights up, showing moving pictures of what looks like a missile being assembled, the words  _Phase Two_  printed at the very top. "What were you lying?"

Steve can see Fury scrambling to explain everything away, and he's angry enough that he pulls a page out of Tony Stark's book and cuts the man off before he can speak. "You told me," he snaps, "that you're continuing Howard's work, that you're using it figure out 'unlimited sustainable energy,' but you aren't!"

"Yes, we are!" Fury exclaims.

"Stop lying to me!" Steve brings his fists down, cracking the glass of the table. Fury snaps his hand to his gun, and Steve scoffs, eyeing him and suddenly seeing not a friend and ally, but a liar trying to use him for his own selfish means. "I was wrong, director," he says, letting his disappointment show in his tone. "The world hasn't changed a bit."

"Did you know about this?" Dr. Banner asks, and Steve turns to see him directing his question to Agents Coulson and Romanoff.

Agent Romanoff shakes her head. "No," she replies, keeping her hand on her gun, though to her credit, she hadn't unsnapped the safety strap of her holster. "Like I said before, I've been on assignment for a while now."

Agent Coulson—the only one who didn't move for his gun—steps forward, and Steve realizes that he'd  _known_. When he asked Coulson earlier about what Fury hadn't been telling them, Coulson had blatantly told them he didn't know what Fury was keeping a secret. "Captain, there is a reason why S.H.I.E.L.D. possesses—"

"And what reason would S.H.I.E.L.D. have for using the Tesseract to build weapons of mass destruction?" Dr. Banner interjects, his body language suddenly loosening. That's when Steve realizes that Fury isn't wary of  _him_ —he'd been worried about Dr. Banner's reaction.

Bastard.

Fury exhales loudly and moves his hand away from his holster. "Because of them," he points to the Odinssons.

"Us?" Thor echoes with no small confusion.

"Last year," Fury begins, "Earth had a visitor from another planet who had a grudge match that  _leveled_  a small town." Steve blinks in shock and glances at the two brothers, who're both wearing sheepish expressions as they exchange pointed looks at each other. "We learned," Fury continues, "that not only are we not alone, we are hopelessly,  _hilariously_ ," he looks at Steve pointedly, "outgunned."

"My people want nothing but peace with your planet!" Thor burst out indignantly.

"But you're not the only people out there, are you?" Fury asks rhetorically. " _And_  you're not the only threat. The world's filling up with people who can't be matched. That can't be controlled."

"Like you controlled the cube?" Steve asks bitterly.

"Your work with the Tesseract is what drew Thanos to it!" Thor points out heatedly. "It is a signal to all the realms that the Earth is ready for a higher form of war!"

That sends a thrill of alarm through Steve. "A higher form?" he echoes, but no one's paying attention to him now.

"You forced our hand!" Fury declares. "We  _had_  to come up with something—"

"A nuclear deterrent," Stark concludes sardonically. "'Cause that always calms everything right down."

"Remind me again how you made your fortune, Stark," Fury sneers.

But Steve can see that the man was trying to steer the conversation away, and he tries to put them back on track. "I'm sure if he still made weapons Stark would be neck-deep in this—"

"Wait, wait, wait," Stark protests. "How is this now about me?"

"I'm sorry," Steve drawls sarcastically. "Isn't everything?"

"I thought humans were more evolved than this?" Thor scoffs.

" _Excuse me_ ," Fury counters, "did we come to your planet and blow stuff up?"

" _Enough!_ " Everyone snaps their mouths shut and looks to Loki. "Director," he says, "I believe it would be most prudent if you have the scepter secured now."

After a beat of confusion, Stark sighs. "It's amplifying our doubts," he mutters, and Steve recoils as he realizes that his intentions to make peace with Stark had just been smashed into tiny little pieces.

"Indeed, Lord Stark," Loki agrees, giving Stark another impressed look.

"Damn," Stark grins. "Say it again, would you?" Steve rolls his eyes, but as far as lightening the mood went, Stark certainly knew how to pull it off.

"Director," Coulson speaks up. "Agent Romanoff and I can secure the spear."

Fury nods. "Do it," he says, and the two agents move—Coulson picking up the black container sitting to the side of the table and Agent Romanoff focusing on the stick itself.

"Doctor, can you help me detach these?" she asks.

"Sure," Dr. Banner agrees, already stepping in beside her. It only takes them a few seconds to load the staff into the box, and then Dr. Banner's moving to Stark's side.

"Wait." Both agents pause on their way out, giving Fury a questioning glance. "When you're done with that, Agent Romanoff, head down to the detention level. See if you can get anything else out of our guest."

"I  _beg_  your pardon?" Thor growls.

"Information, brother," Loki calms his brother down. "The mortals will not touch her."

Thor exhales loudly, but nods to the red-haired agent, who approaches him before leaving. " _I_  won't hurt her, Thor," she assures him, looking him in the eye. "I promise."

At that, Thor relaxes. "Very well, Lady Romanoff," he allows, and she exits the room with Coulson. "And we?" Thor asks the director when they'd left. "What are we to do?"

"Gentlemen, I know things are tense right now—"

"Understatement," Stark interjects, folding his arms across his chest. It emphasizes the blue circle of light seeping through his dark, printed shirt.

"—but despite all this," Fury says, gesturing to the Phase Two gun Steve had left on the table, "we can't let Thanos win."

Steve follows Stark's cue, crossing his arms as well. "Make your case, Director."

Fury smiles a little sadly. "I want to talk to you all about an idea. Mister Stark knows this."

"Oh boy," Stark sighs, leaning a hip against the counter.

"It's called," he glances first to Steve, then to Stark and Dr. Banner and Thor and Loki, "the Avengers Initiative."

* * * * *

_Thanos can only do one thing at a time_ , Anna realizes when the torture ends and the mind games began. This idea is only enforced when the mind games stop too as soon as he starts showing her Loki's memories, and when even those were cut off when Loki came to talk to him.

Going on that tangent, Anna throws herself into learning magic, because if the purple motherfucker was showing her these things and thinking she was doing her best, then he wouldn't make her torture Clint or kill anyone else. So she's in the middle of learning a summoning spell a la Harry Potter when the garden fades out and she finds herself back in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s detention room. The doors—which were probably what caught Thanos's attention—were closing shut behind her dead godmother's reflection.

Anna wants to laugh, because it's brilliant, really. Of all the people S.H.I.E.L.D. could send to interrogate Thanos, they choose two of the three people Anna hadn't grown up knowing. The bastard surprisingly doesn't blame her for it, and he  _does_  know Loki a lot better since he'd spent a long time watching every memory the trickster had, but all the same, he's a little displeased at her lack of information on their second interrogator.

' **Your Clint Barton has spoken of her** ,' he says to Anna as he makes her body pace, acting as if he hasn't noticed the redhead's entry. ' **He has feelings for this one.** '

It's an attempt to taunt her, but Anna had known about Clint and Natasha Romanoff for a long time now. It's one of the issues that kept her from actually pursuing Clint in the six years she'd known him. Because, well, how could you complete with  _the_  Black Widow?

Suddenly, Thanos chuckles as he learns something new to him. ' **She is your godmother!** '

Anna sighs. 'That was like a posthumous award, or something equally sentimental. She was a close family friend.'

' **You sound so ungrateful that she died for you.** ' Fucking hell, is the bastard actually chastising her for this? ' **Or is it that you dislike her because of your love for Clint Barton? Or is it **because**** ,' he drawls, ' **she is the reason your father died?** '

A spark of anger flares up inside her, lighting up her desire to suddenly lash out and make the asshole hurt as much as she did, and Anna discovers that her fighting spirit isn't as broken as she thought it was.

'Oh please,' she snaps, having long forgotten her fear of his special brand of torture. 'Like I haven't seen anything about you? Mommy-dearest dead at your hands, much?' She grunts as the motherfucker sends a brief jolt of pain through her, in the process showing her that particular memory once more.

" _Sui-San," Thanos fell to his knees, slipping his hands under the dead body. "Mother."_

' **You grow immune to my power,** ' Thanos rumbles, cutting off the vision. He sounds half-pleased and half-not at her tenacity. ' **You are a strong one. Much stronger than the Asgardian prince. You have much potential.** '

Anna tries to snort, but she's been unable to control her own body for a while now, so she's not surprised that the sound doesn't escape her throat.

She feels her lips quirk into a smile under Thanos's control. "There's not many people who can sneak up on me," her voice says as her body turns around.

"But you figured I'd come," the Black Widow replies with a knowing glint in her eyes.

Her throat hums. "After. After whatever tortures Fury can concoct, you would appear as a friend. As a balm. And I would cooperate."

Green eyes hardened. "I wanna know what you've done to Agent Barton."

"I'd say I expanded his mind," Thanos taunts, but at the same time, he's pushing Anna back further into her mind, completely muffling the conversation that was now taking place so that all she could do was watch as her godmother steps closer to the door of the cage and crosses her arms.

'You fucking shit!' Anna snaps, but the fucking shit pays her no attention, seemingly focused on keeping control over her body as he spoke with her dead godmother.

But Anna's slightly panicking, and the apathy she'd developed during Thanos's tortures and mind games lifts as she realizes that if she couldn't hear the conversation, then maybe Thanos would let something slip about her, breaking the second rule of time-travel Loki had told her about.

And she wouldn't know at all.

 _Fuck_.

So she pushes against the figurative barrier that the asshole had put up, and she pushes and pushes until her desperation threatens to consume her whole and swallow her down the black hole of—

Her body jerks off the bench. Concentration broken, it takes Anna a while to realize that  _she'd done that_.

And then she laughs, delighted and free until Thanos is done feeling shocked and forces her back once more.

"Anna?" Romanoff asks, her hearing finally returning to her. "Anna, can you fight—?"

"She can," Thanos tells their visitor, her body panting helplessly even though he'd regained control. "But not for long. Even now she weakens against my will." A chuckle escapes him, and he smiles at the redhead. "I never had this much trouble from your new Asgardian pet."

The Black Widow steps even closer, peering intently at her. "Anna, hold on," she encourages. "Loki's working on something to get him out, okay? But right now, I need to you to answer a few questions."

It's kind of weird that the first words her godmother ever says to her are filled with encouragement. She'd always imagined that it would fall along the lines of 'Stay away from Clint, you bitch.' And while she hates the infamous Black Widow for so many things, including Clint's unwavering loyalty to her even after death, it's also pretty thrilling that her godmother is being so nice to her.

'Okay,' she tries to say, but the fucker has renewed his grip over her, rendering her powerless once more.

"You worry for dear Anna when you should worry about your Agent Barton," he goads, and at that, both she and Natasha Romanoff stiffen at the threat. "But no. No, I won't touch Barton," he says, stepping closer to where the redhead stood, "not until I make him kill you. Slowly. Intimately. In every way he knows you fear. And then he'll wake just long enough to see his good work—"

_Still moving against him, she snapped her hand forward quickly, driving it forcefully into his neck. Running her fingers up his chest, Anna panted as she cupped his cheeks gently, twisting his head sharply until she heard a snap._

"—and when he screams I'll split his skull!"

 _She came back to her senses, abruptly feeling the ache between her thighs, the cock buried inside her and the sweat rolling down her back as she stared at Clint's dead body, remembering how she'd_ —

Thanos pounds a fist into the cage wall, bringing a numb Anna back to the present. "This is my bargain, you mewling quim!"

Hearing the vision described with her own voice—hearing that Thanos would make Clint do to the one woman he loved the most what Anna had done to him—is worse than anything he'd ever shown her. Because all that torture, all those sick things he'd made her do, they were all just in her head. Because now she realizes that she'd  _known_  that it wasn't real.

But now he was saying it aloud, saying it to the woman Anna knew Clint Barton's heart and mind had never let go of, and somehow, letting Natasha Romanoff know all that? That  _made_  it real. Made it possible. Made it  _probable_.

And Anna…god, but she loves Clint too much to let his future turn out the way it had. That's why Anna had agreed to Loki's price, agreed to come back here and  _fix_  everything. It didn't matter that she would never know her father, but if her mother could have him back? If Clint could keep his beloved 'Tasha' and live as happily ever after as they could together? If Uncle Thor still had his Jane Foster to cherish and make his queen?

Then the price of coming back here was worth it, and she wouldn't let Thanos screw everything up again.

" _You are a Stark, and your forefathers never knew how to give up."_

Holding those words close to her, Anna snaps forward and somehow manages to push Thanos off to the side, seizing control of her body back with both metaphorical hands. Her hand spreads across the glass and squeaks as it slid down with her while she falls to her knees and meets her godmother's stare. "Tash—!" she grunts, then groans long and low, squeezing her eyes shut as Thanos rages from within her, his words garbled and incoherent with fury as he slams his will against hers, fighting for dominance.

"Anna!" Natasha calls. "Anna, look at me! How do I save Clint? How do we get rid of the mind control? Anna!"

"Punch 'im…hard…head…" she grits out without even needing to think twice about it. Clint had drilled into her head soon after their started living together that 'cognitive recalibration' would get rid of any mind-control spell.

"Punch him in the head? That will get rid of the mind control?" Natasha repeats urgently.

"Yes!" is the last thing Anna says, and then she's shrieking as Thanos returns to the tried and tested method that works on her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Disclaimer** : I own none of the scenes listed below. The words, arranged in those orders, all belong to the screen writers of The Avengers 2012 movie.
> 
>  **Phase Two Scene** : The part where everyone is present in the lab when Steve comes in with the gun is from the…well, from the movie's Phase Two scene. Again, I just wanted to make it clear that even if this is an AU of The Avengers 2012 movie, everyone will stay as in character as I can keep them.
> 
>  **"Stop lying to me"** : Bruce Banner says this to Natasha Romanoff in the hut at the beginning of the movie. Why did I put that there? Well, all the clues are in all of Steve's POVs. Guess, my darlings. Go on. Give it your best shot. :)
> 
>  **Detention Room Scene** : The part where Thanos taunts Natasha Romanoff comes from the scene between Loki and Black Widow in the detention level. Here, I'm trying to emphasize that Thanos was really the one doing all the walking and talking using Loki's body. It's his ideas, it's his words, it's his actions, but in the movie, he did it hiding behind Loki's face so that in the future (aka the end of the movie and my chapter 1) he can get into Asgard without Odin being aware of an intruder. If you haven't figured that out by now, then, "You're Welcome." More on why he went to Asgard in the future in later chapters, though if you're a hard-core Marvel fan, I think you know what Thanos is after, yeah?


	9. to pondering the benefits

Anna swallows back a scream as she realizes where she was. "Fuck you, Thanos," she mutters, feeling a heavy sort of resignation settle in her heart. "Fuck you so fucking much." But honestly, what else should she have expected from a pissed off, genocidal warlord prince who wanted to punish her for spilling his secrets to his enemies?

" _We're going to visit a special person today," her mother said, holding a younger Anna in her arms. "Someone who I know would really love to meet you."_

_Young Anna glanced around before looking up solemnly to meet Pepper's gaze. "Are we here to see daddy?"_

_Her mother's smile was pained and on the verge of crying. "Yeah, baby, we are." She sniffled, then glanced down to watch her step as she made her way up a small staircase. "I know I've never taken you to see him before, but I wanted you to be old enough to understand some things when you meet him."_

" _I know why he's dead," little Anna told her mother. "And I know he's not coming home with us."_

" _I know you know that, sweetheart," Pepper sighed, her smile still sad. "I guess…I guess I thought that taking you here would…well, I don't know," she settled. "I guess it was silly of me to wait so long."_

"You're not silly, Mommy," Anna assures her mother, echoing her younger self's words. "I love you."

_Pepper gave her a watery smile. "I love you too."_

Thwap!

"Mommy!" little Anna yells as Pepper topples over, an arrow in her chest.

"No!" Anna cries, running to her mother's side, panic slicing through her body.

'It's a trick,' she tells herself. It's a trick and this  _never_  happened because Pepper had been alive when Anna had stepped on to inherit Stark Industries and she knows her mother had been alive when Thanos came to Earth. But seeing her mother fall like that…

It may be another illusion, but damn if Thanos didn't make them all seem so real.

She ran and ran but she didn't get there first. Clint comes out of nowhere, bow slung over his shoulder and knife clutched in one hand. Anna shouts and runs faster, but he only has eyes for little Anna and a dying Pepper.

Grabbing young Anna by the hair, he tosses her carelessly into a headstone and turns back to Pepper, straddling her and tearing her blouse open, making Anna swear and curse and—

Suddenly she's there, grabbing him by the hair and wrenching it back, driving her fist directly into his throat. Clint staggers back, stunned and choking, and Anna whips her leg around, the heel of her foot swiping harshly at his cheek and sending his head spinning with a sickening  _crack!_

And then he's dead.

"You killed him." Anna turns and finds Pepper sitting up, arrow in her chest and accusation in her eyes. "You killed him!"

"Clint!" little Anna's voice cries, and Anna turns again to see her younger self shaking him, tears pouring down her eyes. "No! Clint, wake up! Clint! Clint!"

"Why did you kill him?" Pepper asks from behind her. "Anna, why? You  _love_  him! Why would you—?"

"God, I didn't mean to," Anna gasps, spinning around to see her mother. "I was just trying to get him off you!"

But Pepper Stark wasn't alone anymore. Beside her is a rotting corpse in a filthy suit, tall and bald and half-skeletal. It edges toward Pepper, jaw unhinging and bony arms lifting to reach for her mother.

"Get away!" she shrieks at it, pushing the thing away from her injured mother. Its back slams into a headstone, folding it in half as its spine audibly broke. And then it stays flung over the slab of rock rising from the ground, unmoving now.

"Tony!" Pepper cries, and Anna gets pushed back as her mother rushes to the corpse's side.

And then bile is rushing up her throat because  _holy god_   _that_   _cannot be her father!_  Tony Stark was always a picture of cleanliness in all the images and videos she'd seen of him—even the drunk and appalling ones—and this thing…

It couldn't be him.

Pepper screams at the sky, begging the corpse to wake up because he couldn't— _couldn't_ —be dead and when it doesn't move, she turns on Anna with rage on her face.

"Get out!" she snarls. "Get out, you stupid girl! How could you? How  _could you!_ "

"Clint!" the younger Anna's voice comes back. "Please, wake up! Don't leave me here. I need you!"

"Get me out," Anna whispers, horror gripping her tight. "Get me out of here!"

"You kill everything you touch," Pepper snarls, blue eyes cold, flat and full of blame.

And she's suddenly on the beach. Sinking to her knees, Anna stares down at her hands, shock numbing her emotions as she tries to take in the fact that she'd killed the two most important men she'd always wanted to get to know more than anyone else in her entire life.

"Anna?" Her head snaps up, and she sees Uncle Thor walking towards her. He was casually dressed in a loose button-up and board shorts—the outfit she'd always kept on hand for him just in case he dropped by for another unexpected visit—and holding two cans of Mountain Dew. His small smile disappears when he takes in her expression, and he puts the cans down on the sand to rush to her side. "Little Anna, are you well? What has happened?"

She remembers this moment. Two years after Odin had her cast out of Asgard, Uncle Thor had a disagreement with his father about Loki, and his usual way of putting off an apology was to come visit her. Anna had been struggling with her attraction with Clint, knowing it was so wrong and aware that Clint would never look at her that way, that she never had the tiniest of chances of him loving her at all.

Because despite the routine and mentor-student relationship they'd established, Clint had never made a secret of  _his_  feelings for her. She was like a pet to him—one that he had to feed and train every day. And he was a bachelor through and through, had been for sixteen years before Uncle Thor foisted her on him, and two years apparently wasn't enough for him to change his ways and  _want_  to keep her around. He brought home the occasional redhead and had deliberately loud noisy sex in whatever apartment they'd been staying in at the time because he knew it forced her to leave, knew it reminded her of why her mother had left her with Uncle Thor in the first place. Clint never held anything back with her, and it was both a blessing for her training and a curse for her masochistic attraction to him.

And at eighteen, all of that—the merciless training, the loud sex, the stoic way he spoke to her—it had all been so apocalyptic, she'd become depressed and lost weight that even Clint slipped up and began to worry about her. Of course, he'd been very relieved when Uncle Thor arrived, passing her onto him and washing his hands of her troubles while the only uncle she had left was paying her a visit.

"Uncle Thor," she chokes out, throwing her arms around him because god, she couldn't take any more. Thanos has made her kill Clint so many times that it was getting old, but her father…

God, her father had been a shock.

"Anna, please," Uncle Thor says, rubbing circles into her back, "speak of what troubles you. How can I help if I do not know what ails you?"

Anna just sobs into his chest, this time because of more than her Clint troubles. God, how she  _wished_  she could just go back to those problems. They seemed so simple compared to the ones she faced now.

"Do you wish for me to find Clint Barton and—"

"No!" she shouts, pulling back sharply and glancing to the side, where she knows the small hut they had been staying in stood. Clint was in there entertaining—or rather, being entertained  _by_ —yet another Random Redhead. "No, I—"  _I don't_   _want to kill him again. I can't do this anymore_. "—can't do this anymore."

"Do what?" Uncle Thor asks. Anna opens her mouth to tell him everything.

But who was she kidding? This was just a memory. It may be protecting her sanity and it may feel real, but none of it was. This was an escape—a way to keep hold of her ever-loosening grip on her mind—and sooner or later it would fade. And then Thanos would be back with more of his tricks and false promises taken from his never-ending arsenal.

So just like the first time around, she closes her mouth and looks away, unable to share her misery with the only person who never stopped caring about her.

"Do what, Anna?" Uncle Thor persists, brushing back her messy hair and gently angling her face to look at him. "The training? Do you wish for Clint Barton to cease your lessons in archery?"

No. "No," she shakes her head. "No, I like the archery."

"Then what troubles you, my Lady Thorsdóttir?" He smiles at the title nostalgically even as it puts a lump in Anna's throat.

She says nothing, simply pulling him back into a hug and repressing the wish to have her real uncle with her. He feels real enough anyway, and Anna's determined to enjoy the little comforts she could get before Thanos reappears and took it all away again.

* * * * *

"I need to speak with you, Lord Stark."

Tony glances up to see Loki hurrying into the room containing his armor, and the demigod looks frenzied. "What's up?" he asks, setting aside the helmet he had been about to wear.

Bright gold and green sparks erupt from Loki's fingertips and began dancing around them. Tony jerks back, only to slam into what seems to be hard air—which was really impossible. Freaking magic, showing up Tony Stark, of all people. He was so going to make something—

Right, Tony. Not the time.

"It's a privacy spell," Loki supplies when Tony shot him a suspicious look.

"So this is about our little time-traveler," Tony deduces, and  _man_ , but that word was still so awesome to say.

Loki nods. "Earlier, while I spoke with Thanos, he conjured up a ball of light," he begins.

"I saw it," Tony nods, absently turning around and feeling the invisible…spell-thingy Loki had cast. "Nice job pulling that out of her, by the way."

"I thank you," the guy replies, sidetracked. "The conjured ball was tinted with color," he continues after a pause. "I was unable to bring this up when we conferred earlier on, but I also wished to speak about this in private."

Tony turns back to his companion as his brain tries to process what Loki was saying. "So you wanted to talk to me about a floating tinted nightlight?" he asks lightly, though he could tell there was more to it. There has to be if Loki's 'this-is-important' vibe was anything to go by.

In response, Loki raises an open palm and makes his own magic nightlight. Tony's mind races, formulas and equations dancing past as the idea to replicate the effects forms in his brain. His hands itch to touch the light and see if it was as hot it should be to attain that level of brightness.

"See the green-tint around this ball?" Loki asks, making Tony focus on the slightly green edges around the magic ball. "That's my soul."

Tony blinks, the hubbub in his thoughts freezing as he took in the new information. "Um,  _what?_ " he asks, because That Did Not Compute. "Aren't souls supposed to stay  _in_  the body?"

Loki gets rid of the light, which is kind of saddening. Tony had  _really_  wanted to touch it first and see what applications— "As I said," Loki speaks up, breaking through his thoughts, "the soul is the conduit that allows us all to conduct cosmic energy and convert it into what you call magic." Finally—an explanation Tony understood. "My soul has a green tint. Thor's is red. Thanos's soul, as you've seen," he adds somberly, "is purple."

Cool. Okay, Tony learned something new today—souls have colors. What did that have to do with a tinted—?

…wait. A. Minute.

Scrambling for his phone, Tony brings up the footage of Loki's confrontation with Thanos and zooms in on the magic light ball. "Do the nightlight again," Tony demands, and Loki wordlessly conjures it again.

Light-green. Too light. Almost invisible.

Tony looks back at the video and sees the too-light tint. It's almost the same color as Pepper's favorite scented hand-soap. Lavender, if he wasn't mistaken. If he was, then it was probably magnolia, but that wasn't the point.

If Loki said that souls were the figurative wand people wave to make magic, and his magic had the 'tint' of his soul, which was green, then the lavender-tinted ball Thanos had made wasn't conducted through Anna-girl's soul.

It was conducted through  _his,_ which meant that Thanos hadn't broken her will yet.

"Wait," Tony shakes his head. "We already knew she still had her free will. Thanos said she had an unbreakable spirit, remember? Why is this—" he gestures to the ball in the demigod's hand, "—relevant?"

"I had always assumed that Thanos had used a spell to stay connected with me," Loki says, the light disappearing once more, "while he safely resided in whatever hellhole he ruled in, keeping away from the war about to break loose. But if he had been using a possession spell, then that—" he gestures to the video, "—shouldn't be possible. As I said, you need a soul to conduct cosmic energy. Thanos used his. Therefore, Thanos's soul is currently in Lady Anna's body."

Tony bites his lip. "Didn't we already know that?" he asks, suddenly unsure, because hell, that's the assumption he'd been going on this whole time and he'd assumed everyone was on the same page, ever since Loki had done that whole spiel about exorcism.

Loki chuckles bitterly. "Perhaps you did," he replies, shaking his head with what seems like chagrin. "You have a… _knack_  for realizing things others don't, Lord Stark."

"Not that I don't appreciate the compliment," Tony tells him, "but I'm a little lost now. You thought you were under a…possession spell," and in retrospect, that wasn't the weirdest thing that had ever come out of his mouth, "but thanks to his little bout of show and brag down in the cage, you realized that Thanos had actually possessed you with his soul, which moved into Anna-girl when she laid one on you. So…?"

"You will not like what I have to say," Loki warns him.

"Doesn't seem to matter to you," Tony points out blatantly, his curiosity sufficiently roused, "since you came to me anyway."

Loki inhales deeply. "If the plans you deduced Thanos to have is true, then as you said, so long as he had me as his vessel, then all paths led him to a victory, and you indeed stood no chance of stopping him in the end." Loki paused, then adds meaningfully, "With me as his vessel, he was immortal."

Oh, no. Tony did  _not_  like where this was going. "With Anna-girl too," he reminds the demigod, feeling his heart begin to race. "You said it yourself—she's immortal until we kick Thanos's ass."

Loki shakes his head, making Tony's heart sink to his gut. "I said immortality is bequeathed to her until the moment her purpose for returning is indubitably accomplished. Her purpose was to stop Thanos's plans from coming to fruition."

"And it hasn't been stopped yet," Tony argues, waving a hand in the air. "The invasion is on until we get the Tesseract back."

"And then she is mortal again," Loki says, "with Thanos inside of her." Another pause. "He would be vulnerable."

Something in him shrieks with fury. "We are  _not_  going to  _kill_ her," he snaps, finally saying the word Loki was trying to avoid as his calculating self is overruled by his temper. "How can you even— She  _saved_  you, you ungrateful piece of—!"

"I know!" Loki rages, lurching up to pace along the radius of his privacy spell. "I know that! I know I owe her a  _great_  debt for saving me from the hand Fate had dealt."

"Then why the hell would you even  _think_  it!" Tony demands heatedly.

Loki shakes his head again, still pacing. "You don't know Thanos like I do," he says, sounding like a movie cliché. "We may stop the invasion now, but then what? Thanos  _will_  come again, and next time in his own body. He'll be indestructible! We cannot stop him then from laying waste to your world!"

"Don't use  _my_  world as an excuse, you selfish son of a bitch!" Tony sneers, and it has Loki turning to him with insulted anger on his face. But Tony bulldozes right over whatever excuse he had falling from his lips, because he'd just realized—and god, how could he have missed it before?—that this must've been what future-Loki had hoped his younger self would think when he sent Anna back here.

The selfish motherfucker had  _planned_  this.  _All_  of it.

"You think you're the only fuck up who got screwed over?" Tony snaps at Loki, taking the frustrations of his realization out on the only Loki he could possibly face. "You're not! You think you're the only one on this ship who faced his own personal hell as someone's captive? You're _not!_ "

"Oh, of course," Loki scoffs. "You think you know what it's like to be—"

"I don't  _think_ —I  _know_ ," Tony cuts him off, seething. "Just because the situation was different doesn't mean the end result wasn't the same."

Loki quiets down at that, looking thoughtful as he stares at him. The sudden lull gives Tony time to wrestle his temper back and think about what he was doing. It's been a while since his temper got away from him, and it  _was_  a rather stupid move on his part to rant and rave at a demigod with actual magical powers who could send him to…well, to some hellish dimension or something equally awful.

To keep the peace, and possibly save his life from any future retaliations from the so-called god of mischief, Tony chooses the high road for once and continues speaking in a lower tone. "I know how it feels," he says to Loki, who glances at him with a haunted expression. "When I escaped my version of hell, I destroyed everything I could. I took pleasure in seeing everything my captors worked for explode in their faces. I killed whoever got  _in_  my way  _on_  my way out. Even now, I soothe my nightmares by remembering how I screwed them all over, and I don't feel a  _speck_  of guilt for killing who I could kill in that god-forsaken cave. So I  _know,_ " he nods, acknowledging the look of yearning that forms in Loki's eyes, "how good it feels to fuck them over and watch them suffer for what they did. And I want that for you too," he admits. "It's a…a privilege. One that very few people ever get."

"And we are two of those people," Loki murmurs, understanding.

"So is Anna," Tony tells him, and the demigod flinches. "That's what you forgot. You're not the only victim here. You're not the only one who Thanos screwed over—who was taken captive by that monster."  _And it wasn't just Thanos who did that to her_ , he thinks, tempted to point that out to the dark-haired god. He chooses not to. "You deserve to see Thanos suffer for what he's done, but she has that privilege too. Are you going to take that from her?"

Loki swallows, hesitating, but Tony knows he has Loki by the balls now. The selfish fuck wouldn't do anything to Anna—not if he felt some sort of kinship with her. Because that's how it was. No man was an island, and if Tony could empathize with Loki despite the difference in their experiences, then Loki sure as hell would empathize would Anna.

Such was their nature, human or not.

"He will be unbeatable if he comes in his own body," Loki repeats, but now he just sounds like he's trying to convince himself. "We may never have this chance again."

"Maybe," Tony says. "But Anna saved more than just you; she saved my planet— _and_  yours too. I think we should pay the favor back. Don't you?"

* * * * *

" _Ten minutes to ten_." Fury's voice comes in through the earpiece. " _Hill?_ "

" _All heavy vehicles have been secured,_ " Maria reports, " _and everything that wasn't bolted down, has been_."

" _I took the liberty of packing up my gear too _,__ " Stark cuts in obnoxiously. " _They're in my 'room.' That tiny poor excuse for a_ —"

" _The armory's been secured, sir _,__ " Phil butts in before Stark can get any more galling, " _and we have agents stationed on the deck and at all possible entry points ready to apprehend Agent Barton and his team. Agent Romanoff's already there_."

Natasha presses a finger to her earpiece. "That's confirmed, sir," she tells him, looking over the forklift she was hiding behind to see at the black jet dotting the sky. "And we have incoming."

" _Barton's starting the party early,_ " Stark says lightly.

" _Director,_ " another voice comes through, " _we_   _have an incoming aircraft, Transport six-six-bravo, with an arms ammunition haul_."

" _That's them,_ " Rogers states unnecessarily.

" _Good,_ " Fury says. " _I want all systems in_ —"

The ground suddenly trembles, and klaxons suddenly begin squawking, red lights blinking to emphasize the severity of the situation. Natasha grips the nearest surface she could find and held on, turning her head when a burst of fire caught her eye.

" _Where did that explosion come from?"_ Fury demands.

"External detonation!" Natasha yells into the comm.

Maria's voice comes in after her, " _She's right, sir—number three engine is down! Can we get a run in? Talk to me!"_

" _Turbine looks mostly intact,_ " someone says faintly through one of the comms, " _but it's impossible to get out there to make repairs while we're in the air!_ "

" _We lose one more engine, we won't be!"_ Hill points out. " _Somebody's gotta get outside and patch that engine_."

" _Stark?"_ Fury asks.

" _I'm on it!"_ Stark replies. " _Can you spot me?"_

" _No!"_ Fury suddenly exclaims. " _Jesus, Stark!"_

Natasha only understood the uncharacteristic yell when Banner pipes up. " _I can't, Tony, I'm sorry_."

" _ **I'll**_ _spot you—I'm on my way,_ " Rogers snaps before anything else can be said.

" _Oh, joy,_ " Stark drawls. " _Later, Bruce_."

" _See you, Tony_."

" _Coulson,_ " Fury says, " _take Doctor Banner and the Odinssons to the detention level. Coordinate with them. You boys make sure that Thanos doesn't escape_."

" _It will be done,_ " Thor assures him.

" _Yes, sir,_ " Coulson responds. " _This way, gentlemen_."

" _Agent Romanoff?"_ Fury finally addresses her.

"We're on standby," Natasha replies, having never taken her eyes off the jet. "Barton's ride is making its landing."

" _I suggest you wait until they're off deck,_ " Fury tells her. " _Let them come in_."

"Yes, sir."

It's another few minutes until the aircraft lands, and then it's opening up with Clint's all-too-familiar form stomping down the ramp. Something in Natasha eases at the sight of him, and she watches as he leads his team to one of the vents before deciding she's seen enough and slips back around the forklift to head indoors. Once there, she takes off at a dead run.

"All units to Vent 4," she yells into her earpiece. "We have eight confirmed hostiles; they are armed and dangerous."

" _Orders, ma'am?"_ someone asks.

"Capture, not kill!" she snaps, angry that they have to ask.

" _Yes, ma'am_."

She arrives at the air corridor in time to see one of the eight hostiles lying on the ground, the others out of sight but presumably down the hall if the bullets ricocheting were any indication, and a uniformed S.H.I.E.L.D. operative was pinned to the wall with an arrow to his shoulder.

Clint is nowhere to be found.

"Damn it!" she curses in her native tongue. "I want eyes on Barton."

"I saw him heading east up the access strip!" someone down the hall answers, his voice echoing above the pinging bullets.

And there were only two places he could go to in that direction: the bridge, and the detention level.

Bridge it was.

She arrives too late. Clint is already making his way further up the corridor, ducking the openings to avoid the bullets aimed for his head, and it was far too risky to start running to him now with all the chaos going on.

" _Engine 1 is now in shut down,_ " a voice suddenly announces from the bridge below.

And then the ship tips sideways.

Gripping the nearest railing before she could slide down, Natasha looks up just in time to see that Clint was less lucky, having actually toppled heels over head down the corridor before his hands found purchase in the grated floor. He pushes himself to his feet and continues his route, seemingly unbothered by the impromptu lack of grace he'd exhibited.

" _It's Barton,_ " Fury calls through the comms, " _he took out our systems! He's headed for the detention level—does anyone copy?"_

"This is Agent Romanoff," Natasha grits out, swinging herself over the railing to secure her balance. "I copy."

She finds her center of gravity and clamors after him, catching up with his oblivious figure three corridors later. She paces herself and gets close enough to touch him before he senses her presence and loads his bow, but Natasha catches it with both hands and moves out of the way as he releases the string and sends the arrow flying over her shoulder. She tries to twist the bow out of his hands, but he turns and snaps his elbow into her face, making her stagger back as she recovers from the hit.

A flash of motion has her leaning back as Clint whirls and swings his bow at her, and she spins to charge her kick as he tries to bring the bow back around and hit her with it. Hearing him grunt and take a few steps back, she gets an idea and drops over the edge of the walkway, moving to cross its underbelly and pulling herself back up the opposite side with a twirl. It gives her enough momentum to slide right in front of Clint and kick him in the abdomen, but he's got his bow loaded again within the precious few moments it takes her to get up. She's forced to leap aside, swinging to the other catwalk to avoid the arrow.

Clint follows her, landing close enough that he has to use his bow as a staff. Natasha makes the mistake of grabbing it by the string, and he uses it to bash her in the face. She manages to bring her fists up to shield herself, but that lets him pull her around, slamming her back into the hard railing.

At the realization that she was pinned, Natasha's knee shoots up automatically, aiming for his balls. Her knee collides with a jock-cup, but that's okay because he still freezes up reflexively, allowing her to slam her fist into his cheek. He moves with the momentum of her sideways punch to keep his neck from getting snapped, and Natasha pushes off the railing and swings the bow over her shoulders, turning to him as he drew a knife from his side.

Damn.

She drops the bow and blocks his attack with an arm, punching him in the chest to distract him long enough to grab his arm with a hand, then she punches him in the same place to keep him from hitting her again as she straightens his arm out and squeezes his elbow. Clint lets out a sharp yelp of pain, but recovers too quickly. He swings the knife up, catches it with his left hand and takes a swipe at her, and Natasha ducks as fast as she could, feeling his arm as it brushes across her back.

Grabbing the wrist that held the knife, Natasha twists her arm in, trapping it between his arm and chest to hold the knife to his throat. But Clint plays dirty and tugs her hair back sharply with his free hand, twirling the knife to point at her chin. Grunting in alarm, Natasha struggles to keep him from sticking the weapon into her skull as she tries to calculate how the hell she was going to get out of this one.

She doesn't get the chance to. She's staring into his eyes, thinking and panting and cursing the unnatural blue tint she can see glowing from his half-closed eyelids when Clint drops the knife, and she's distracted long enough that he spins her around, and then her sight is filled with yellow.

Natasha hears her head hit the hard metal railing with a dull  _thud,_ and then she's out.

* * * * *

Anna watches helplessly as the world around her moves, her body stepping out of the open door thanks to the too-familiar man standing beside the control panel.

' **See how loyal he is**?' the purple body-jacking motherfucker asks her, making her body press up against the younger version of Clint Barton as he stood still, looking down at her.

"You didn't say you'd be changing clothes, sir," Clint says, his face twitching as he adds, "Do I  _still_  call you sir, or is it ma'am now?"

"It was an unexpected development," her mouth replies, ignoring his question. "Kiss me."

Caught off-guard, Anna's heart skips a beat.

"What?" she asks, and just as she realizes that she has control of her body again, Clint obeys the command, pulling her close and capturing her lips with his.

Her brain sputters to a stop, all her protests disappearing as she kisses him back.

Even before her life was screwed over, Anna had never bought into the notion of sparks-flying, heart-pounding, gut-wrenching romance—probably because she watched her mother pine for her dead father for the first sixteen years of her life.

But this? It was more than her fantasies, more than the visions Thanos had planted in her head and god, she'd always known Clint owned her ass since the moment she laid eyes on him, but this kiss confirms it. She could kiss him until Ragnarök came and went, and she wouldn't even open her eyes to see what the fuss was about.

And she savors the moment completely—memorizing how it felt to slide her tongue across his bottom lip, the way he sighs when she sinks her fingers through his hair and massages his scalp, the feel of his body pressing against hers…

Clint's large hands slide down her waist to grope at her ass and push her closer against him, making Anna gasp his name in surprise as her breasts were squished into hard chest and the adrenaline-fueled desire and need rushes through her veins. God, but it had been too long since she last had a man touch her this way and Clint was proving much too skilled at firing up every one of her nerve endings.

"Do pardon us," she hears someone say as a bellow echoes around the room, but Clint doesn't stop even through those distracting sounds, and it's such a heady feeling to have him like this, holding onto her like he was never going to let her go.

And then she's pulling away and her head is turning to see Loki and a younger version of her uncle Bruce Banner holding back an enraged-looking Uncle Thor. She feels Clint move his mouth to her jaw, then his teeth began to nip at her lobe, his breath puffing hotly across the flesh of her ear, and god, but that's why it takes Anna several dizzy seconds to recover the shattered remains of her common sense.

By that time, Thanos is the one in control again. "Stop," he tells Clint, who pulls his lips off her skin, though those bright blue, slightly glazed eyes never leave her face.

That's when it hits her—the realization that Thanos was using Clint against her once more, tantalizing her with a taste of Clint Barton with the hope that she'd give in and stop fighting him. And now…

Now she doesn't even know  _why_  she's still fighting him. He already has control of her body, already has access to all her memories… So why was she still bothering to enforce her own will when she's so obviously out-matched?

"Do you know who I am, Agent Barton?" Bruce asks, drawing her attention to the unexpected grouping.

"He's the Hulk," Clint murmurs in her ear. "I have nothing that can keep him down for long."

"I know," Thanos replies with her voice, and he's frustrated because he doesn't have anything that could go up against the Hulk either. Not with her mortal body so susceptible to magical burn-out. Thanos turns her body around and looks up at Clint, using one of her hands to stroke his cheek while the other slips down his pants to grip something hard. "Should he kill them for me and die trying? Or are you going to cooperate and finally give in to me?" And somehow, Anna can tell that Thanos is speaking to  _her,_ not anyone else.

'Please,' she murmurs, all too aware of the knife she now had in hand, tucked away from the threesome's sight, 'don't hurt him.'

"Then give in to me," Thanos bargains.

"You cannot give in, Lady Anna!" Uncle Thor shouts, obviously overhearing the one-sided conversation. "We will not harm Agent Barton, and he cannot harm us!"

"That first part may be true," Thanos agrees, still talking out loud. "But I'd very much like to test that last option. Barton," he adds, "shoot the beast, would you?"

In a flash, Clint has drawn an arrow and fired a shot, but before Anna can panic, Loki's already waving his hand and turning the arrow into a white bird. Clint draws another arrow and fires, still aiming for Bruce. He misses again thanks to Loki, but Anna's hand is moving and a fireball is flying through the air just as Loki's shield spell dissipates. Bruce was flung back at the force of the attack, hitting the wall and sinking to the floor on all fours.

His skin starts turning green.

"Banner!" Loki calls, glancing at them. "Calm yourself. You have a job to do." When the change shows no signs of stopping, Uncle Thor grabs his brother's shoulder and moves them back as Bruce's shirt began to rip.

Thanos was alarmed as well, but there's satisfaction in his tone as he says to Clint, "Come. We should go now."

"Halt!" Thor yells at their backs, but neither her body nor Clint are stopped from exiting the doors.

She finds out why when a thumping sound echoes faintly through the hall, and when she turns, Clint is slumped face down on the ground. Standing over him was a man Anna had only ever seen in pictures.

Agent Phil Coulson.

" _His name was Phil, son of Coul," Uncle Thor said, smiling sadly. "He was a brave warrior, and a good friend. It was his death that led to the formation of the Avengers; that allowed your father and Steve Rogers to set aside their differences and come together to help defeat my brother and his army."_

Thanos hums. ' **His death is a catalyst for what I no longer need,** ' he rumbles. ' **And so it shall not be.** '

Anna doesn't protest the bastard's decision. Her mother had been fond of Phil Coulson, and despite the rocky relationship they had in the end, Anna loves her mother enough to give her another friend she could lean on besides the uncles she'd grown up knowing. Not to mention Anna's own eventual fate…

"Please don't move," he says, aiming a hefty gun at her. Her eyes dart to the large rifle, and he notices. "You like this?" he asks rhetorically. "We started working on the prototype after Loki sent the Destroyer—"

" _The Destroyer was the protector of Asgard's Weapons Vault," Uncle Thor said as they walked through a small town. "Loki sent it here to this tiny village to stop me from coming back to Asgard."_

"—even I don't know what it does," Coulson adds. He activates the gun, making it emit a crunching whine. "You wanna find out?"

The world spins as her body whirls around and drops to the ground, her hand darting out to throw Clint's knife with practiced ease. Coulson cries out in pain and falls to the floor, the knife embedded in his upper thigh.

That's the last Anna sees of him—the discharge of Coulson's weapon catching her in the chest and slamming her solidly against a wall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Disclaimer** : The fight scene between Clint and Natasha was taken from The Avengers 2012 movie, so I don't own it. Well, except how it ended—that's mine.


	10. to gathering your strength

Steve feels more than hears the director come to a stop beside him, and they watch in silence as Agent Coulson's bed is wheeled in and secured next to where the now-awake Agent Romanoff's head is being examined.

"What's the word, Director?" he eventually asks, glancing over.

Fury exhales heavily. "Thor's keeping the Hulk busy in Hangar 3, Loki's working on some spell to revert the Hulk back into Banner, and Stark's holed up in his room, working on fixing his suit."

"And your missing agent?" Steve asks.

"Right there," Fury says, nodding to the man whose bed is being brought into a separate room. "We found him next to Coulson. From what Coulson managed to tell me, Agent Romanoff was able to inform him about how to stop the mind-control, but she wasn't fast enough to do it herself." He gestures to the irate-looking dame in question. "Coulson was lucky enough to knock Barton out, but got a knife to the leg before he could stop Thanos from escaping. He says his host chanted something to disappear, probably some sort of teleportation spell."

Steve feels alarm course through him, and he turns his head to face the other man. "How do we know she isn't still on board?"

"We used thermal sensors to scan every inch of this place," Fury tells him. "Every heat signature has been accounted for. He's gone."

"And he took Thor's descendant too," Steve sighs. "The poor guy's gonna be pissed. Does he know?"

Fury hedges. "We were hoping to tell him right before we leave for Stark Tower, but first, we need to confirm the Cube's location." And they couldn't do that while Barton was still out-cold.

"Let me know when he wakes up," Steve requests, uncrossing his arms and stepping away from the glass wall. "I need to talk to Stark."

"About what?"

Steve hesitates, weighing the benefits of sharing the problem with a man who was technically his superior. "Stark and I are part of a team now. We need to settle our differences if we want the team to work out the way it's intended to," he eventually says, though a little guilt seeps into him as he decides to keep the entire truth to himself for now.

"Really?" Fury asks skeptically. "Why the sudden change of heart? You've been pretty aggressive towards him this entire time."

Was he? Goodness, how awful had he been? "I just…" Steve tries to organize the words he wants to say. And when it comes out, he realizes why he was so upset with the man in the first place. "I realized he isn't Howard."

Fury nods understandingly. "Then you should probably go tell him that."

Steve quirks a smile at the director, then heads off in the direction of Stark's room. He's two corridors away when he hears the almost-faint sound of Fury giving out orders.

"Hill," the director attempts to relay quietly, but Steve's sharp ears still catch the back-stabbing, knife-twisting words, "I want audio up in Stark's room."

Swallowing back the pain of betrayal that lodges itself in his throat, Steve forces his body to keep moving, grateful that he'd at least been introduced to the concept of security cameras and knowing that every hallway in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s base had them.

Now he understood why Stark could barely stand to be in the same room with Fury and his other agents.

He'd noticed, of course. How could he not? Tony Stark was so different from Howard, who had been proud but approachable. Tony Stark was closed off and only had two people he pointedly preferred to associate with onboard—Loki and Dr. Banner. Steve thinks it's because they're different  _and_  very intelligent. He tolerated Agent Coulson too for some reason, and he didn't really  _dis_ like Thor, though Stark's feelings there were probably thanks to the confrontation they had earlier on. And of course, he disliked Steve too, but Steve freely admits that he played a large part in that because of his…well,  _aggressiveness_ , as Fury had pointed out earlier.

The irony there is that the reason Steve had been so pushy with Stark was because he'd been indignant on S.H.I.E.L.D.'s behalf.

Good Lord, but he was a fool. Now he has even more to apologize for.

But that would have to wait. Fury thinks that he's going to settle his differences with Stark, and Steve's willing to do just that.

After this whole invasion was over though, he and Stark were going to have a very  _extensive_  talk about a very specific director.

 

* * * * *

She's not dead. She's in severe pain, but she isn't dead, and with Thanos in control, there apparently wasn't a state of unconsciousness she could fall into. She's awake as the pain from the red blast seared a crater into her chest, awake when Thanos makes her body move as if it hadn't just been pounded into a wall like a crash test dummy, awake when Thanos chants something weird and her body is suddenly squeezed and stretched.

The view from her mother's New York office fills her eyesight, and she blinks dumbly at it for half a second. 'Holy fucking shit, did we just teleport?' she asks Thanos, her surprise briefly overcoming the pain squeezing at her chest.

"We did," Thanos replies, her body beginning a casual walk towards the balcony doors at his behest. The coolness factor of having actually teleported from point A to point B goes away almost immediately, and Anna curses him with every step he takes because it agitates the burns and bruises she got from Coulson's fucking gun. Thanos doesn't seem to feel the pain that accompanies each step—he just makes her body  _stroll_  as if it hadn't been blasted into a wall by a motherfucking cannon.

Asshole.

At least Clint was safe now, and he'd be with the Avengers when they came to stop the invasion. Anna swallows as she realizes she might not have changed much after all. With Thanos inside her, she couldn't stop the portal from opening and killing a portion of New York's population. She was supposed to stop that—stop all of  _this_ —from happening, but she'd failed. She—

"Please vacate the premises immediately." Anna feels her heart jump at the familiar voice, and her feet freeze mid-stride.

" _J.A.R.V.I.S., I'm heading up to the party," she said while hooking an earring with her left hand and slipping her right shoe on with the other. "How long will it take you to upload yourself?"_

" _Thirty minutes, Miss Anna," J.A.R.V.I.S. replied. "I trust you'll survive without me for that long?"_

"J.A.R.V.I.S., was it?" Thanos muses, relying on her memories for information on her father's AI. "Initiate Stark Protocol one-one-thirteen."

"No such protocol found," J.A.R.V.I.S. responds smugly. "Please vacate the premises immediately, or I shall be obliged to use excessive force." To back up his statement, several wall panels opens to reveal mounted machine guns with attached laser-sights, the red beams of light pointing directly towards the already-damaged part of her chest.

At the unexpected danger, Thanos's fury leaks out into her body, sending adrenaline pumping through her veins. "What do you mean—?"

'1-1-13 is my birthday, dumbass,' Anna supplies, feeling just as smug as J.A.R.V.I.S. sounds despite the threat to her life. 'The protocol doesn't exist because  _I_  don't exist.' Which also explains why she hadn't known about the machine guns hidden in the walls. Her mother must've had them taken down around the time she was born.

"Well, then," Thanos grits out with no small anger. "I shall…give in—" her nose wrinkles in distaste, "—to your demands, J.A.R.V.I.S."

With one more chant, they're suddenly outside, and the wind instantly sears into her wounds. Anna's breath catches in her throat when the first lash of air strikes the torn flesh and bared muscles, and even Thanos couldn't stop her body from shaking as he braces her body against the harsh push of wild air whipping around them.

"Who are you?" Startled, Anna feels her body turn to see who'd spoken, and beside them stood what looks like a reactor and an old man in a blue-checkered shirt. She racks her brain, but couldn't remember who the man is. He's familiar though, like she'd seen him only once and never got to know him.

"It's me, doc," her mouth says, and the 'doc' somehow realizes that it's Thanos talking to him. "Is it ready?"

"I'm just calibrating the start sequence before I activate the reactor," the old man says, half-yelling over the furious winds swiping around them.

"Good," Thanos half-yells back as he staggers toward the briefcase sitting beside the reactor. Her thumbs flick the locks open, and there, sitting inside, is the Tesseract.

"What are you doing?" the old man asks, alarmed as Thanos reaches for the cube. "That's not  _safe!"_

Thanos ignores his warning and takes the Tesseract with her bare hands, and then all Anna could see is blue-and-white power.

 

* * * * *

Blood rushes loudly past his ears as new colors seep past the blue haze. The colors hurt him less than the blue and the guilt.

God, the guilt. It was consuming and so breath-taking and oh, god, all those people…

"Clint," a familiar voice pierces through the howl of silence and loyalty and  _death_ — "You're gonna be all right."

 _You're gonna be all right_. As if it was that fucking easy.

"You know that?" he asks tightly as doubt latches itself onto his mind, doubling his guilt as red—god, what a fucking appropriate color—appears in his line of sight. "Is that what you know?"

The red moves, introducing black and something bright into the mix. Silver? He huffs. As if silver could line his shitty, blue-colored clouds now and besides, there was no window—

"I got no window," he mutters, realizing that's what he needed to— "I have to flush him out." The voice tells him something but he misses it completely over the too-loud sound of water being poured into a metal cup. "Don't understand you," he says, only just realizing that he was breathing too heavily.

He closes his eyes because the colors are too much now. There's no more blue, and fuck, but he misses it. Blue was simple. Blue was…

No. No, blue was bad. Blue meant killing people he wasn't supposed to kill, meant following a bastard he didn't want to follow.

He hadn't wanted to. He  _hadn't_.

What happened? God, it felt like— "Have you ever had someone take your brain and play?" he asks aloud, knowing that someone was still there with him. "Pull you out," he whispers, "and stuff something back in." And then he sees the red and realizes who he's talking to, and if anyone can understand, it's her. Fuck, but it's  _always_  her. "You know what it's like to be unmade."

The colors are still too much, and Natasha's hair was like a halo of blood around pale skin that was oddly distorted and tinted with violet. "You know that I do," her lips say, her eyes so green they glowed. Her voice was like an anchor, pulling his focus to her and tweaking all the colors down, away from blue and back to normal.

The howls fade away, and Clint finally finds himself. Reason returns to him, and his first thought is—

"Why am I back?" he asks her, because he knew there had been no escape. The loyalty had been too firm, the desire to break away absolutely non-existent. He thought he'd follow that motherfucking cock-sucker until he was dead. "How'd you get him out?"

"Cognitive recalibration," Natasha replies, sitting beside him. "Coulson hit you really hard in the head."

…that's it? Clint tries not to laugh hysterically at the simple, fuck-all solution. "I'll have to thank him," he huffs.

Natasha's smile is small, but it always was, wasn't it? The fact that it's there at all meant more than words could express.

Clint almost smiles. "Natasha," he murmurs as her hands undo the restraints he hadn't even noticed was around his wrists, "how many agents did I—?"

"Don't," she says firmly, looking him in the eye. "Don't do that to yourself, Clint. This is Thanos," she tells him, and he has to swallow as he saw that she didn't blame him for the horrible things he knew he'd done. "This is monsters and magic and nothing we were ever trained for."

And then the name she said sinks in. "Thanos," he repeats. "I thought his name was Loki?"

Natasha shakes her head. "Loki was being possessed by Thanos," she informs him, unlatching the last buckle keeping him strapped to the bed. "Thanos is the real bad guy, and he's using Thor's daughter as a new host."

Clint abruptly remembers seeing Loki on the opposite side of the room from him, and he hadn't even noticed the disgust in his bones until he feels relief washing it away, because thank fuck, he hadn't kissed a magically-disguised Loki after all. "He get away?" he asks.

Red curls shake slightly as Natasha nods. "Don't suppose you know where?"

He shakes his head. "Didn't need to know. Didn't ask," he rasps, and Natasha gets up to give him space. "He's gonna make his play soon though," he adds, feeling his throat itch with dryness. "Today." He needed water—

She'd poured him water. He remembers hearing the sound overshadowing her voice. Clint pushes himself up and reaches for the upright cup on the tray, grateful that Natasha had known what he needed. He hasn't stopped for food or water since…

God, he had no idea what the date today even was.

"We have to stop him," Natasha says, derailing his attempt to remember when he'd last powered up.

"Yeah?" he asks, swallowing his water. "Who's we?"

At that, she smiles knowingly, wider now than before, and it's such a surprise that Clint almost drops his cup 'cause damn, Tasha's gorgeous like that.

Lips still curved up, Natasha assures him, "Oh, Clint. You're going to  _love_  this."


	11. to having a backup plan

"Seriously?"

Natasha has to bite back a smile for…damn, she doesn't even know how many times it's been. "Yes, Clint. Seriously."

"Time-traveler," Clint whistles. "And she's Thor's kid? Shit."

She nods, not feeling up to saying the lie aloud. Clint will figure it out soon anyway. Anna may share some features with Dr. Jane Foster, but she looks far too much like her real father for the ruse to last long. To be honest, Natasha's surprised Fury had missed the close resemblance, and she's pretty sure that aside from her, only Loki was aware of Anna's true origins—though that was probably because of some sort of magic mojo than actual brain-boggling deduction. The next to guess would probably be Dr. Banner—

"So what now?" Clint asks.

Natasha thought about it before jerking her head to the small washroom. "Now, you clean up," she says, "and then we grab the others, and we kick Thanos to the curb."

Clint paused after standing up. "We're not killing him?"

She purses her lips. "We can't," she admits. "Loki said that as a time-traveler, Anna's automatically immortal until we defeat Thanos. And it's true," she tacks on. "Coulson put a hole in Anna's chest, but Thanos still made her get up and walk away like it was a paper cut. Besides," she adds, "Thor believes that she's his daughter and practically threatened Fury into agreeing not to hurt her."

Another low whistle. "Fury doesn't get threatened easily," he comments, reaching for the door handle and pushing into the washroom.

"Yeah, well, when you're backed into a corner by a Norse god, you're pressured to say yes to anything he wants," she points out.

Clint huffs a laugh. "Least he had a choice," he says bitterly, turning the taps and slapping water against his face.

She bites the inside of her bottom lip as she realizes that yes, Fury did have a choice, and he chose the answer that would assuage Thor. But if Natasha knows him as well as she does, then Fury  _would_  be up to something—a backup plan in case the Initiative fails.

And as she eyes Clint's bent form, Natasha thinks knows who Fury's backup plan is.

* * * * *

"Stark." Roger's voice startles him, and Tony's lucky that the harmful end of his portable soldering iron doesn't make a flambé out of his fingers.

"Jesus, Cap!" he snaps, turning the fire to the side where nothing fleshy could be burned and switching it off. "You don't sneak up on a guy with a flame thrower near his hands!"

"Sorry," the captain says, actually sounding apologetic. "Look, I wanted to apologize for my behavior earlier on the bri—"

"Oh for love of—" Tony cuts himself off and drops the soldering iron on the table before refocusing on his stubborn helmet. "Forget about it."

"Forget about it?" Rogers echoes. "Look, I know you're upset about what I said back there—"

Tony snorts. "I can tell you right now and mean it too—I'm not upset about anything that came out of your mouth," he tells the man honestly as he peers at the exposed wiring. "There's nothing to forgive." Rogers falls quiet, so Tony goes back to fixing his headpiece, though he knows better than to think the conversation's over.

He's developed a sixth sense for shit like these, and Pepper had helped him fine-tune that skill for…close to ten years now. Wow. Has it really been that long since he met—

"I thought you'd be like him," Rogers suddenly says just as Tony's about to reattach the last plate and cover the wiring, breaking into his thought-process as well. It catches him off-guard, so Rogers very clearly sees how Tony freezes at the words. "That's why I was so…mad. At you."

Tony forces himself to recover with a quip. "Is that it?" he asks, keeping his eyes on his work and picking up the soldering iron once again. "Geez, you're not the only person I've disappointed, Cap. That's nothing—"

"I  _was_  disappointed," Rogers steamrolls right over Tony's ramblings, and Tony Stark finds himself clamping down on a pained sound. Because those words coming from  _Captain America?_  The hit was on the pain scale of holy-shit-I'm-gonna-cry, and with a clenched jaw, Tony turns on the soldering iron and goes back to work. He pretends that he's only half-listening to the captain when he continues to speak. "When I heard that I was going to finally meet you, I thought, 'This is my chance to have just a little piece of my past again.' I thought you could be this…this link to something familiar. I thought we could have the friendship that Howard and I had."

"So  _sorry_  to disappoint." Tony manages to not snarl the words out, though his hands clamp down tightly on the tools in his hands.

"Don't be," Rogers says firmly, and it startles Tony enough that he actually turns and looks at the other man, his hands automatically setting down his things. "It served me right, trying to bring the past with me. You were…a slap to the face." He shakes his head, smiling self-depreciatively. "Until I met you, I thought I was just dreaming, and every day I opened my eyes, I was waiting to wake up back in 1943. I locked myself into a routine so that I didn't have to look up and see that the world wasn't the one I knew so well. Everything's too… _different,_ and the prospect of finally meeting you and thinking you'd be like Howard was a safety net I clung to. Realizing you were different too was the last straw. I got mad and I lashed out at you."

"That's ah," Tony clears his throat, pushing back the mix of emotions scrambling for his attention as he realizes that Rogers was being _sincere_  about the whole 'I-want-to-apologize' shtick, "perfectly reasonable reaction to have."

"Maybe it is," Rogers shrugs, "but that doesn't make it okay. I had no right to judge you before even meeting you, and I have no right to be angry that you're not your father. You shouldn't be, anyway. Howard was Howard. Tony should be Tony."

Wow. Oh, wow. Tony's mind? Totally blown.

Wow.

"Yeah," Tony manages to say after a few seconds of disbelief. "Yeah, um. Okay. Thanks."

"I know it took me a while to realize how awful I was being towards you, but I think I've yanked my head out my ass now." Tony represses the urge to giggle at the sight and sound of  _Captain America_  saying 'ass.' Heh. "Anyway, that's what I'm sorry for, and I hope that you can forgive me for it. And that despite my mistakes, you'd still find it in you to let me be your friend."

Tony swallows thickly, unable to decide whether to cackle with maniacal glee or do a fan-girl squeal. "Yeah, we can do that," he says steadily, none of his insecurities making it into his voice, thank fuck.

Captain America smiles, clearly relieved. He holds out his hand. "I'm Steven Rogers, Mister Stark," he tells Tony. "Call me Steve."

Tony stares down at the outstretched hand, and something that felt suspiciously like giddiness blooms around his arc reactor. "Good to meet you, Steve," he replies, clasping his hand with Rog— Steve's. "Call me Tony."

"Knock, knock." Looking up, Tony sees Natashalie in the doorway, with another agent—presumably Barton—standing behind her. "If you boys are finished bonding," she says, "wheels up in ten. Thor and Loki are getting Banner back. They're going to meet us at the hangar."

Tony holds his helmet up. "Got my own ride," he tells her, and it comes out in a nicer tone than he normally directs at her. The jumbo-sized egg on her forehead might have something to do with it. "The cube still gonna be at my tower?" he asks her companion.

"That's what I hear, sir," Barton nods. Sir. Huh. Tony likes him already, even if he  _is_  looking a little too hyped up for Ton's liking.

"Sir," Jarvis's voice pipes up, and Tony swipes a finger along the phone resting on the table.

"What do you have for me, Jarvis?" he asks, though he already suspects that it's about—

"Your expected guest has arrived," Jarvis told him. "They are currently on the roof, along with Dr. Selvig and what seems to be a prototype reactor."

Tony thought as much. "Keep an eye on them for me, would you? We're on our way."

"Hang on," Rog—  _Steve_  speaks up, frowning at the two agents. "Have you two been cleared—?"

"No concussions or irreparable damage, Cap," she cuts him off, looking impatient now. "We're fine."

"Then I'll meet you there," Tony announces, picking up his soldering iron once more. "Oh," he tacks on, glancing at Barton. "Good to have you back."

Barton looks surprised, but his expression smoothes out soon after, leaving only the vaguest expression of gratitude. "Thank you, sir."

"Careful, Tony," Steve says, clapping a hand over his shoulder. "Your human side's peeking out."

Tony stifles a smile and pushes the happy feelings of  _belonging_  to the side. "Human side. Bitch, please," he snorts, firing up the soldering iron once more, "I'm Iron Man."

* * * * *

He doesn't quite forget the kiss. How could he forget the way the girl had touched him as if she were committing him to memory, the way it felt like a welcome and a goodbye at the same time? It had been the most intense encounter he'd ever had, and the guilt of it bore down on him each time he glances over at the woman beside him.

The memory of it is exacerbated when they reach the hangar. The moment Thor laid eyes on him, his smile is wiped off his face, replaced by a furious glower. It kind of emphasizes the fact that he'd kissed  _Thor's_  daughter, and that if the guy had any say in it, he'd be as flat as road-kill courtesy of Thor's fucking scary hammer.

He's busy trying not to shrink under Thor's angry glare when the voice comes through his comm. " _Agent Barton, do not react_." Obediently, Clint doesn't so much as twitch, even when the God of Thunder—the fucking  _God_  of fucking  _Thunder_ —hefts his hammer onto his shoulder while giving him a pointed stare. " _This is Director Fury, code DFS-3Y3_."

That pulls his focus away from Thor, because if the director was giving him what looks like secret orders, then it had to be pretty damn serious. He sneaks a glance at Natasha, who was welcoming Dr. Banner back, and as he suspected, her comm isn't blinking like his probably was, meaning it wasn't active.

And seriously, the  _Hulk_  was on the carrier. Whose genius idea was  _that?_

" _Barton,_ " Fury says, pulling him back on topic. " _We need to ensure that the portal doesn't open. And to do that, then the threat has to be neutralized_."

Thanos. Clint's grip on his bow tightens, suddenly eager to carry the mission out. He owes that bastard an arrow to the eye socket—

" _If you get the chance, take out the host_ ," Fury orders, and Clint freezes, the sensation of a pair of lips on his ghosting against him.

Oh, fuck.

 _Fuck_. How the fuck he was going to warn the others about this shit? He couldn't kill  _her._

And Jesus, but Fury might want to risk pissing off a mythological god, but Clint sure as fuck didn't, especially since the guy seems pissed at him already.

He glances at Natasha, trying to come up with a way to warn her that doesn't involve speaking or signing, because there are too many cameras around and too many witnesses to risk it. Not to mention the jet the director had put them on has a camera on its ceiling, so Fury would know the  _second_ Clint tries anything. And Clint doesn't want to risk his standing with S.H.I.E.L.D. anymore than he already has.

Shit.

 _Shit_.

" _I know it sounds bad, Barton_ ," Fury tacks on. " _But best case scenario, Loki can use magic to bring her back. **Without** Thanos latched onto her_."

Oh.

Oh,  _thank fuck_. Clint relaxes, suddenly really grateful that Fury had some sort of plan to save both Thor's daughter  _and_  their standing with the alien gods.

" _I'll say it again, agent_ ," the director says, and Clint inhales, reassured that Fury at least still trusts him now that he isn't under mind-control, " _take out the host. Scratch your right elbow if you copy_."

Clint bends his arm and scratches it lightly.

" _Good. Fury out_."

* * * * *

When the curtain separating him from the rest of the infirmary whips back, Phil doesn't expect to see Tony Stark step through.

"Agent," he greets almost cheerfully. "How're you doing?"

"I was fine," Phil answers, "and then you showed up."

Stark snorts and laughs. "I was wrong," he says. "You're  _not_  an alien who didn't understand humor. I think I owe Pepper a pair of Louboutins now. Or was that a weekend in Paris?"

Phil clears his throat when the other man looks like he was actually thinking about the alleged bet. "What can I help you with, Mister Stark?"

In response, Stark holds up a slim laptop and an earpiece. "I took the liberty of hooking this into S.H.I.E.L.D.'s mainframes," he says, handing the items to Phil. "You can keep in touch with us and Fury won't even know you're there."

Understanding comes to him a few seconds later. "Is this about Miss Snow?" Phil clarifies, setting the warm laptop on his…well, on his lap, and tucking the comm into his ear.

"You could say that," Stark shrugs, sliding his hands into his pockets.

Phil is instantly suspicious. "What's going on, Mister Stark?"

Stark smiles charmingly, but his eyes are sharp and calculating. "I don't trust Fury," he says. "You know that. But I do trust you," he tacks on before Phil can say anything, and the words stump him into silence, "otherwise, I wouldn't have let you in on our little secret at all."

"I see," Phil manages to say after a few tries. Because Stark's trust is a Big Deal. After Afghanistan, and especially after Obadiah Stane, Tony Stark had developed trust-issues as wide and deep as the Grand Canyon. It was one of the reasons why he openly made his distrust for S.H.I.E.L.D.'s purpose known to everyone onboard and constantly did his best to irritate the director and show everyone else up with his great leaps in logic. "What exactly—?"

"I think Fury's up to something," Tony cuts him off, peering intently at him, "and I think he's going to involve Agent Barton."

That makes him straighten up, despite the brief burn of his thigh-wound, and pay the man all his attention. "How so?"

"I did the math," Stark shrugs. "Barton's new to the team, he's possibly the least informed of current events, and he's got a grudge—I got that much from my brief interaction with him. Not to mention he'll be out to prove that he's still a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. Fury's going to use that, but I don't know how."

"So you want me to be your behind-the-scenes guy," Phil concludes. "Find out what contingencies the director is willing to use."

"I want you to be our eyes and ears," Stark says firmly. "If the Avengers Initiative is going to work, then we need someone keeping two eyes on everything, and not only does Fury have one eye to spare, I also don't trust him."

"You realize that I am an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.," Phil points out.

Stark smiles that cool smile once more. "I realize that unlike Fury, you actually care about your agents." He reaches over and pulls the laptop open, revealing an image of Thanos's vessel pressed up against a mind-controlled Clint. Stark plays the video, letting Phil see and hear Anna's voice order Clint to kiss her, and how the blue from Anna's eyes turns brown just before Clint does as he's ordered. Anna seems to melt into the agent, and her relaxed stance indicates—

Phil swallows, taking in the  _love_  that was practically visible in how Anna touches Clint, and how Clint's aggressive motions softens unconsciously as the kiss went on.

Jesus.

"She knows him," Stark murmurs needlessly. "In the future? That's them. That's Barton and whoever Anna will be to him. A girlfriend, a fiancée, a wife… Well, it doesn't matter what she is to him, does it? They're it. And Fury's going to do something that could screw that up."

Phil presses the key to pause the video, unintentionally stopping it at the point when Clint stops kissing her and just stares down at Anna, whose eyes were in the middle of turning blue again. In that moment, the two clashed. Clint looks much too old for such a young thing like Anna, and she couldn't be more than twenty. There was almost a ten-year difference there, and it shows.

…but hell, who was he to judge? Maybe Stark's right—maybe Clint falls for this girl in the future. If that were so, then who cares what their age difference was if Clint was happy with her? If they were happy together?

His lips quirk up, and Phil looks toward Stark. "Fine," he sighs, giving in. "I'll be your behind-the-scenes guy."

"Eyes and ears, Agent," Stark corrects him, grinning triumphantly and already making his way to the curtains. "Or maybe our own personal Supernanny."

The possibly accurate analogy makes Phil close his eyes and groan. "I'm dead."

* * * * *

As Anna stares up at the tall old tree, two sentences cross her thoughts.

'Holy motherfucking shit,' and, 'This has to be Yggdrasil, the World Tree.'

Then, 'No, wait,' passes through her mind when she lets her eyes move off the huge tree to trace the length of an errant branch that isn't connected to Yggdrasil.

Her mind grinds to a halt as she takes in the view.

Anna has always been aware that the universe was vast and insurmountable. What she hadn't known was that it was—for all intents and purposes—a fucking forest.

Old as fuck trees rose high above the younger ones, but every tree seems separate from each other, as if they were spaced out to give room for the roots that snaked and coiled around each other. Anna could barely see the ground they were planted in—the roots were that long, that thick, and that twisted. The branches above were just as thick and far-reaching, and the leaves were a mix of dark and light colors, like the sky at dawn or twilight. And in between the leaves—hanging like fruits but shining almost like stars in the sky—were actual, spinning worlds.

That's when she realizes that  _every_  tree she could see? They were World Trees too.

Holy. Motherfucking. Shit.

" **Beautiful, is it not?** " a deep voice asks from behind her.

"Holy fuck me," she gasps and whirls around, startled, only to be stopped abruptly by the purple hand she hadn't even felt around her wrist. But it's not until the moment she sees Thanos standing there, all big and purple and armored, that she realizes she's alone in her own body again. And she'd known what he looked like thanks to the visions he gave her, but fuck if he wasn't larger now, with huge bulging muscles and thick appendages.

One of his thick fingers points to her chest, and she looks down to see the blue glow of the Tesseract seemingly embedded into her chest, just above her breasts and right where Coulson's gun had shot her. It reminds her of the arc reactor that had kept her father alive after his time in Afghanistan. "Take care not to let go of this," Thanos warns her, "lest we be stuck here for all eternity."

He doesn't wait for her reply, only letting out a rumbling, delighted laugh before pulling—or dragging, rather—her up along the root they're standing on. Anna has to double her pace in order to keep up, as well as not get a twisted ankle in the process.

"Where are you going?" she half-whines even as she glances around, taking in the majestic views she knows no one else had ever seen before.

" **I think you know** ," the asshole sneers.

Anna takes a moment to think about it. "Without Loki, you lost access to your precious gauntlet," she reasons aloud, "so you're settling for a consolation prize."

He growls, the grip he has on her arm tightening until Anna's sure she'd gain a bruise. " **There was never another prize** ," he spits out. " **There's only one thing I wish for, and I _shall_  have it.**"

…oh. Oh, son of a  _bitch_. Thanos wants the gauntlet because it could  _manipulate reality_. With it, he could turn himself into a god. The Tesseract couldn't do that for him because it was just a doorway that leads from one place to another, from Earth to Asgard or Earth to…here.

But why here? What could he possible hope to accomplish by coming here? Why not go directly to Asgard and go for the gauntlet?

Okay, the last part was easy enough to figure out. Anna may have been learning Loki's shit, but she couldn't do the magicks the god could, like suspend time or something cool. If Thanos still had Loki, he could just do that—or worse—to whoever got in his way and keep walking until he reaches the vault and got his hands on the gauntlet.

But again, why here? It's not like the bastard could manipulate reality from here—

"Motherfucker," she murmurs, stumbling as she realizes that yeah, he might be able to do just that, because they're in the forest of  _World Trees_. And while Anna doesn't know if he  _would_  succeed, she knows that he would damn well try.

And fuck, but who knew what would happen if the sonovabitch got the chance? If he succeeded in changing reality?

" **So now you see,** " Thanos says, never slowing his speed. Anna says nothing in return, but her mind is racing for a way to stop him from doing whatever he was about to do. And what she ends up doing is perhaps the most reckless and idiotic thing she's ever done.

Thanos was just about to reach a hand out to the middle of the tree's trunk when Anna launches past him and touches a hand to the rough bark first. Then she closes her eyes and—hoping she was doing it right—makes a wish.

Once again, her world dissolves into blue-white light.


	12. to killing the messenger

Loki steps out of the flying carriage—a jet, as Agent Romanoff calls it—and joins the rest of the Avengers as Iron Man lands on the smaller circular outcrop on his balcony. " _The cube isn't here,_ " Stark's voice comes through the tiny earpiece Romanoff had given him on the plane as the dais around Stark shifts to take off his armor in a grand display while he walks down the pathway. " _Doctor Selvig is up there on the roof with a reactor, but the cube is gone_."

"Well, where the hell did it go?" Captain Rogers asks as he looks around, as if he'd find it—

A deafening whine echoes through the sky, and from the roof, a spark of blue sizzles brilliantly. "Found it," Agent Barton says needlessly.

Thor whirls Mjölnir and takes to the sky, and Loki latches onto Rogers—the most durable and temperamentally-stable of the mortals currently in his company—and teleports them wordlessly to the rooftop. The Lady Anna is on her knees, her body crumpled in on itself as blue-white lights sizzle across her skin. The brighter glow of the Tesseract shines from underneath her huddled form.

Loki briefly glances at his brother when he darts to the side, crouching next to the familiar form of an old man—Dr. Selvig, Loki remembers.

"Miss Anna?" Rogers warily calls out, bringing Loki's attention back to the lady. "Are you all right?"

Anna's head snaps up sharply, her body following her motion, and Loki sees that her eyes blazed with the same color as the Tesseract embedded in her chest.

"Thanos is still within her," Loki warns his companions. "We must take care to—"

"Thanos!" Thor yells suddenly, cutting Loki off. "Release Lady Anna!"

Loki expects Thanos to sneer and belittle them, but all that comes out of Anna when her lips part is a low groan, her fingers digging into the sand under her hands as her eyes briefly flash brown, then blue, then brown again.

"She's fighting him still," Loki breathes, deeply impressed at the display of her will. He wonders just what it was that had the lady fighting Thanos so vehemently, what it was that gave her the strength to never break under Thanos's relentless persuasions.

Because—to Loki's chagrin—Thanos  _had_  broken him. The mix of mental and physical tortures had taken its toll, and when Thanos offered him a reprieve that last time, he'd taken it willingly, exchanging relief for access to his soul, and therefore access to the entirety of his energy pools—

…oh. Oh, of course.

How had he not realized it before?

He doesn't realize he's moving until both Thor and Rogers have him by the arms, wrestling him to the ground. "Brother, fight it!" Thor is saying.

"Let me go!" he gripes, looking up at his brother. "Thor, release me! I can do it—I can get him out.  _Now_."

" _Let him go,_ " Stark says urgently. " _Cap! Trust me. Let him do it_."

"Brother," Loki intones when Thor refuses to release him. "Look at my eyes. My mind is my own, I swear it." It takes a few long seconds, but Thor exhales deeply and loosens his grip. Loki rushes to the lady's side immediately after.

"You think you can force me out,  _Asgardian?"_ Thanos sneers briefly, but then the ugly expression fades just as quickly as blue light gave way to brown, leaving Anna looking up at him.

"Hurry," she grits out, grasping his arm when he pulls her up. "Do it—" Her eyes turns blue once again, and the grip on his arm tightens painfully before she regains control. "Stop thinking and do it!"

"I'm sorry," he tells her, gathering the magic he needed and pooling it in his hand. "You suffer because I made you do this—"

"Apologize later, Jesus!" she grunts, sweat slipping from her brow. "Kill me.  _Now!"_

That shocks him. "Kill—" he splutters. "No. No, I mean to exorcise him—"

Thanos returns, and he laughs at what Loki had said. "Exorcise me?" he scoffs. "Your magic is unstable, princeling—"

"—he's in  _my_  body," Anna snaps when she comes back, "my  _mortal_ body. Kill him now and he won't come ba—" Her words end in a scream, her back arching as she fell against Loki, body jerking with a pain Loki knew all too well.

" _Did she just say what I think she said?"_ Stark asks, disbelief in his voice.

"No!" Thor falls to his knees beside them, taking one of the lady's tightly clenched hands and allowing her to squeeze his fingers instead of digging her nails into her palm. "You will not die today, Anna Thorsdóttir. I forbid it!"

A strangled laugh escapes her. "I'm not really your kid—"

"—no," Thanos takes over again, "but you loved her dearly and claimed her as your own. Made her a duchess of—"

"—you  _need_  to end this," Anna groans. "Please. This is how it ends. This was always the plan, Loki, this is what you sent me here for—"

"—she lies," Thanos hisses. "She was chosen because she was strong. A true warrior of Asg— Ack!"

It takes them a few moments to find the arrow sticking out of her back, and when they do, they look up and see Agent Barton standing tall, bow still poised and aimed in their direction.

"Bar—" Thanos wheezes, "—ton."

" _NO!"_ Thor and Stark's voices boom into either side of Loki's ears, and the whine of Iron Man's weapon sounds before a blast rips through the air. Barton barely escapes, and only Romanoff's body colliding with his saves him from Stark's weapon. Metal-covered feet thud against the floor as Iron Man lands a few paces away, his suit looking better than before.

"Wait!" Barton cries, holding his hands up towards Stark, bow still in his grip. "Fury said Loki can bring her back!"

"Fool!" Thor roars, his anger contrasting with the gentle hold with which he held Anna's hand. "There is no spell to bring back the dead!"

"What!" Barton's jaw drops. "But he said… I only… No." He shakes his head. "No, he said you could!"

Loki shakes his head, looking down at the fatal wound resting right beside the Tesseract. "I cannot."

Thanos starts laughing, and Anna's body began coughing up blood. "So that's the plan," he murmurs, rolling blue eyes in Barton's direction. "You used the magic of Yggdrasil to command your lover to do your bidding."

The statement puzzles Loki until Anna returns, her gaze softening as she stares at the horrified archer. "Clint, m'sorry," she murmurs, wheezing wetly. "I needed—" Another wheeze, "—one last favor."

Thanos's blue eyes returns. "This is nothing," he spits out weakly. "I shall return. Death will never take me."

"Maybe not Death," Anna breathes, turning her gaze to the sky. "But I will." Her eyes suddenly glaze over as she stills, her body slumping limply into Loki's arms.

And she was very clearly, very  _obviously_  dead.

* * * * *

"Holy shit, you're Death," Anna exclaims when she sees the cloaked figure that's just suddenly _there_. Just like the flashes she'd seen in Thanos's memories, all she could see of the covered face were lips and jaw, the skin there white as the sliver of teeth that peeked between pale lips.

Death stood quietly in the middle of the frozen superhero fray, but Anna's not worried about them because she knows exactly who Death is here for.

Unexpectedly, Death has something to say about that. "You should not have killed him," she rasps hoarsely. "I have cursed this being to never know my embrace."

Anna doesn't understand what Death's trying to say, and it's not because she sounds like an old lady on the cusp of…well, death. "Then don't embrace him," Anna says to her. "Just send him off to…wherever dead people go."

"But that would require my touching him," Death…well, sort of complains, "and I have sworn never to do so."

Okay,  _now_  Anna kind of gets it. "Are you kidding me?" she demands, ignoring the peanut gallery that erupts in the back of her head that honestly, she shouldn't be taunting Death in  _any_  way. "I died so that he could die. You can't just take me and leave him! That's not what I got me killed for!"

"You shouldn't even be dead!" Death spits, her beautiful face twisting malevolently. "You are from the time beyond and have no place to rest! You may have died a hero, but Valhalla cannot take you, nor can you reside in Niflheim! No god, not Odin or Hela, or even Hades or Osiris can give you safe haven!"

Anna might have said something about that if she hadn't noticed Death's neat little sleight of hand, and without thinking of the consequences, she lunges forward and seizes the wispy purple smoke that's leaking out of her body and curling almost invisibly around the hem of Death's robe. Abruptly, the smoke whirls around Anna, wrapping itself around her fingers and hand until it covers the entirety of her arm.

Death shrieks, no longer keeping with the raspy tone. "You fool!" she bitches angrily, her voice surprisingly more melodious now. "Do you know what you have _done?"_

"Not really," Anna admits a little snappily, "but I'm sure I'll do a better job bringing this soul to where it should go." And she knows just the goddess to give it to, too.

As if realizing what she was thinking, Death's lips press into a sneer, and she stretches her hand towards Anna. "You will never get the chance."

Anna backs away rapidly and makes a split-second decision. "Hela!" she yells, as her feet skid across the dusty ground, pulled forward by an invisible force. " _Hela!"_

"Fool!" Death hisses. "Hela never leaves her realm unless—"

"Unless it pertains to personal matters." Death actually freezes in place, her lips parting in surprised disbelief. Behind her, the Ruler of Niflheim emerges completely from her spooky black portal. "And this, indeed, is a personal matter."

Anna swallows at the sight of her.

On the outside, Hela is a beautiful goddess with shiny black hair, pale green eyes and moonshine skin. But even with—or maybe even because _of_ —her beauty, she's the only goddess who still gives Anna nightmares  _years_  after meeting her. Even now, simply standing in Hela's presence gives Anna the proverbial goose bumps.

"Greetings to you, Lady Thorsdóttir," Hela tells her, and Anna forces herself not to flinch as the goddess steps closer to her.

"Greetings, Queen Hela," Anna replies, careful to mind her manners in front of the ruler of Niflheim. Hela is the one entity in the universe Anna did  _not_  want to piss off.

Hela seems pleased with her respectfulness. "We have much to discuss, Lady Thorsdóttir," she declares.

"The Mad Titan shall not pass my threshold. I will never—!" Death tries to say, but the goddess cuts her off.

"His soul has separated from his body," Hela declares, "and _I_ lay claim on his soul."

Death's lips curl in displeasure. "The girl will pay for her crimes against me. I swore  _never_  to let this soul know my mercy."

"And you keep your oath!" Hela snaps. " _You_  have not delivered him to me— _she_ has. Now, be gone!" With a wave of Hela's hand, Death disappears in a puff of smoke, and the echoes of her enraged shriek lingers slightly in the air. Anna's then left with an armful of purple smoke with the most terrifying death goddess she'd ever met standing several feet from the still-frozen forms of the entire Avengers team.

Damn it all to…ah. Ahem.

"You didn't think of the fruit your actions would bear, did you?" Hela asks her casually.

"I normally do, my queen," Anna responds cautiously. "What actions are we talking about exactly?"

The goddess gestures to her arm, where the purple smoke still writhes. "You touched a bare soul," Hela reminds her. "It has consequences."

Crap. She hadn't known that. "And what consequences do I face?" she asks guardedly.

Hela smiles thinly. "None that is of my doing, child," she says reassuringly, and that lets Anna relax about three hairs. "May I have him now?"

"Yeah, sure," Anna nods, extending her hand to the goddess. The smoke curls out towards Hela, who opens her cloak and waits until the last traces of purple had disappeared inside the dark fabric.

"You have my gratitude, Lady Thorsdóttir," Hela says. "Now, what payments do you wish?"

"Payments?" Anna shakes her head. "Forgive me, my lady, but I don't understand." And considering the last time Anna encountered Hela, the goddess was being particularly patient with her. It was on the same level of weird as the sight of Odin sitting on the grass and teaching Loki magic.

"By taking the God of Chaos and forcing him to submit to him, Thanos has sinned against the Natural Order," Hela replies, folding her hands together. "By taking a prince of Asgard and mistreating him while under his care, he has sinned against Asgard and its people. By taking Loki, he has sinned against my father, and therefore my bloodline."

Oh, god. This was Asgardian Law 101 all over again. Anna hadn't enjoyed those lessons one bit.

"You," Hela says, making Anna tense in wariness, "saved Loki, and delivered the sinner to me, allowing me to carry out judgment against Thanos as I see fit. For your action and service, I may grant you two boons."

Meaning payments. "I see," Anna nods, thinking it over carefully. "What are you willing to grant me?"

Hela's smile stretches into a smirk. "Anything," she whispers. "Anything your mind can conceive. Anything your body desires. Anything your soul yearns for." Anna shudders as she feels the words weave temptingly around her. "I can give you power. Glory." And then her eyes glance to the left, and Anna's eyes follow her gaze to Clint. "Love."

"No." The word is out before she can even think about it, and Hela looks startled at the outright refusal. "No, thank you," Anna tacks on, panicking as she realizes she might've just offended the death goddess. "I want him to love me, but not if it's because someone made him love me." She's rambling now, and it really has to stop. This can't be a good first impression she's making, and Jesus, it's like their first meeting all over again. "But I do have a question."

Hela straightens up, looking all business now. "Very well, time-traveler," she says. "What is it?"

Organizing her thoughts, Anna starts. "Death said I had no place to go. What happens to me now?"

"You delivered Thanos to me," Hela repeats. "For this, your soul need not waste away, as I've granted you a place in my realm when you pass."

"When I pass?" Anna echoes. "You mean I'm—"

"You are in limbo," Hela tells her. "Your soul has parted from your body, and yet Death has not taken you. Truthfully," she adds, "this should never have happened to you, but I sense that you wished for this end."

Anna nods. "Loki said the only way to stop Thanos for good was to kill him," she explains. "That's probably why he sent me to free his past self, so that Thanos's soul would be separated from a body, leaving Death free to take him."

"But Death refused to take him, giving him the chance to seek refuge in your body," Hela concludes knowingly. "And so you were forced to wait for an opportunity such as this," she sighs, gesturing to Anna's still-frozen death scene.

She shrugs. "I actually didn't know if it would work," she admits. "I just…went with it."

"Then you were fortunate in your efforts," Hela says. "Not many could have accomplished the feat you've performed."

…wow. She just got a compliment from  _Hela_. "Thank you," she stutters awkwardly. "That's ah, very kind of you, my queen."

Hela nods regally. "What is it you wish then, Lady Thorsdóttir?" she asks, bringing them back to the topic at hand. "You may choose to stay here and live out the rest of your days however you wish, under the conditions you and my father had agreed upon," she offers. "Or you may even choose to return to your time, though I must warn you, traveler," she tacks on, "your actions now have changed much, and to return to your time now would mean the end of your continued existence. Or," she adds, her expression turning sly, "you can come with me to Niflheim now. I will have to put you to work though," Hela warns her. "Though I openly welcome you into my kingdom, your soul no longer has a place in any of the Realms of Eternal Rest."

Color Anna intrigued. "What kind of work would I be doing?" she asks, 'cause really, Hela was a  _death goddess_. The hell could she do for someone like that?

"Well," Hela muses. "I suspect Death may be a little upset with me for taking one of her toys away." Her green eyes dart to Anna. "I'd need someone to ferry my dead to me."

Anna's eyebrows rose high on her forehead. "You want me to bring your dead to you?" she echoes. "Like…like  _Death?"_

"Not just 'like,' Lady Thorsdóttir," Hela smirks. "Should you arrive at the gates of my realm, you  _will_  become one of my agents. Death may be incarnate, but she is not the only entity who wields the power she personifies."

…motherfucking hell, did Hela just tell her she was going to be  _Death_  when she died? Anna feels like her mind just had been fucked with once more.

No. No, she honestly couldn't think about that shit right now. It was…

It's too much to deal with after everything she'd just been through.

Anna shakes her head. "You said something about two boons?" she asks, already knowing what she wanted more than anything in the world. "May I ask for one now?"

A sad smile appears on Hela's face, as if she'd guessed what Anna wanted too. "Yes, Lady Thorsdóttir, you may."

"I want the first option," she says, thoughts of her father sitting at the forefront of her mind. "I need to make sure my family doesn't fall apart." She swallows. "I wanna live."

"And your second wish?"

As Anna thinks about it, her eyes fall upon the frozen superheroes, on the Tesseract still stuck in her dead body's chest, and she realizes she'd forgotten something pretty important.

Today, May 4, 2012, is the day the world was exposed to the definite existence of extraterrestrial aliens.

Today, May 4, 2012, is the day that a group of able individuals fight off an alien invasion.

Today, May 4, 2012, is the day the Avengers are formed.

But without the invasion, none of that would ever happen. Everyone she loved would never know what it's like to have each other to lean onto. Uncle Rhodey and Uncle Steve might never meet and be friends, her mother might never strike up that happy rapport she had with Uncle Thor, and Uncle Bruce might wander off, forgotten until the world needed saving once more. Despite the estrangement that happened to her and her family, she loves them still, and if she couldn't have them as her family, then they could at least be family to each other.

"The invasion has to happen," Anna murmurs, swallowing heavily as she met Hela's gaze. "The portal has to open. The Chitauri have to come through. They have to fight together, become Earth's mightiest heroes. Become the Avengers."

Hela nods understandingly and holds her hand out, and Anna takes a step back as a particularly ominous-looking black and silver magic began to form. "So you have wished," the queen murmurs, and the magic shoots straight toward Anna from her open palm, "so it shall be."

Anna manages to think, 'Oh, motherfucking shit!' before the world is washed away with darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Vambrace** : a part of an armor set that goes on either forearm.
> 
>  **Death** : In the comics, Death doesn't talk. She has minions to do that for her. However, she has talked to Thanos, so I figured she's just picky in who hears her voice.
> 
>  **Hela** : In the comics, Hela is the ruler of Niflheim and the daughter of another incarnation of Loki. That Loki died in the previous Ragnarök and was replaced by the current Loki, because apparently, after Ragnarök, Asgardians are reborn all over again and turn out as they had before experiencing Ragnarök. I'd get into the topic, but I'd rather incorporate it into a story. Not this one though. Maybe a sequel or a separate story altogether.
> 
>  **In the comics** : I go by the information from the comics because let's face it: if I did what every other writer does and based what I wrote on the original myths, I'd be encouraging a cliché, and I'm too fucking inspired to go down that road. I mean, I love the stories we've got up here and on FF-dot-net, but like everyone else, I wanna be different. Plus, I'd never get half as good a plot as I can if I stuck to the classic stories. Marvel is rife with plotlines open to interpretation, so I'm taking advantage and putting all my imaginings out there.
> 
>  **Disclaimer** : I don't own the major arcs you'll find in Marvel stories—I'm just playing around with the numerous possibilities they've got going on underneath the surface. Marvel, Stan Lee, I love you. And that's pretty big for me to admit since I was a staunch DC girl until I found the X-Men comics and converted. DC, I'm sorry, and it's really all Jean Grey's fault—blame her.


	13. to finding out the truth

Before Thanos's influence was revealed, Tony had wondered about Loki's motives.

Why was the alleged god of mischief and  _deceit_  doing something so ostentatious—so  _obvious_ —when there was no real reward waiting for him at the end of it all?

Because really, even if Loki  _had_  killed so many people before they caught him in Stuttgart, until that army of his could pass through the hypothetical portal, he was just another suicide bomber with one hand on a trigger. He'd had no real leverage  _or_  serious threat, and his motive was flimsy—so much so that he had to repeat it over and over again, like he was forcing them to focus on that part of the situation. And while Tony never could do something so monotonous, the whole thing still hadn't made a lick of sense to him until Anna-girl had come and put Thanos on the equation board.

And when the Thanos thing was exposed? Damn, but  _that's_ when Tony found the fun part of it all. Because holy shit, the guy is a nutty genius! A real live Machiavellian bastard with a mind-blowing plan that was more than Tony had ever expected or encountered before. The only real flaw was Thanos's need to see the plan through himself, otherwise they would've been none the wiser about everything. There was really only one question left to find.

_What had Thanos wanted on Asgard?_

Moot point now though—Thanos was dead.

And so was Anna.

For the first time in a long time, Tony flounders. Because despite all the precautions he'd taken, the one person he had tried so hard to save was still lying in Loki's arms, dead as a fucking doornail, and his brain seems incapable of accepting it, still going through the all angles of how he could've missed this.

He thinks that Fury must've gotten to Barton before he gave the laptop to Coulson. That was the only way… Coulson wouldn't…

Tony had trusted him.

Fuck. Why had he done that? Coulson was Fury's Number-fucking-Two-Guy—why had he trusted the bastard?

And Loki. Fuck, but he wasn't lying. Tony had paid close attention to  _everything_  the demigod had said, and quote-unquote: "The magic used to bring her here to our time was passed from the source to the Lady Anna, which she then passed to me in order to free me from Thanos's control," and, "That source appears to be myself, or at least my future self." Combined and dissected, that means that future-Loki turned Anna-girl into storage unit for his magic and sent her back through time, where Anna-girl then gave Loki the magic his future-self put in her. Thus, future-Loki's magic plus present-Loki's magic equals a much magically-stronger Loki. And Loki was already pretty damn strong, magically speaking.

So this whole thing about not being able to resurrect the dead? It shouldn't be impossible—not for a powerhouse like Loki.

But ever since they'd met, Tony noticed that the bastard was careful with his words. He was the supposed god of mischief and deceit, so to be  _that_ kind of god then _of course_  he had to be good with words—he  _had_ to be good at talking himself out of trouble, after all. And yeah, he may have magic, but that obviously wasn't his trade or else he'd be called the god of mischief and magic. No, no. Deceit implies dishonesty, and Loki played his tricks primarily with words, not magic. The magic—if Tony's assessment of Loki was right and Tony  _knows_ he's right—was the backup plan, a 'just in case they don't buy my bullshit' way of getting out of harm's way.

Loki doesn't outright lie.

So when he says he can't bring her back…

Fuck.

_Fuck!_

"Why not?" he finds himself asking aloud, drawing everyone's attention to him. "Why can't you—? You  _have_ to bring her back!"

" _There is no spell for this!"_ Loki screams at him, completely losing his cool.

Instead of getting stunned into silence, Loki's now-visible anger seems to stroke his own ire. "Then make one up if you have to!" he snarls. "Just get her back!"

"He cannot," Thor tells him morosely, falling back on his ass and slumping his shoulders in defeat. "Souls are immediately taken to either Valhalla or Niflheim. Even if Loki casts such a spell, it will only raise her body, not provide her with her soul."

"I can't accept that," Tony declares, because if he does, then the one person who'd given him the chance to put all the tiny intricate pieces together—the one person who hadn't deserved to—had just died right in front of them. Had been killed  _by_  one of them.

And Barton… Jesus, the man looks destroyed. Sometime ago, he'd sunk to his knees, staring at the woman he'd been ordered to kill. Tony wants to hate him for what he'd done, but…

 _So that's the plan_ , Thanos had said, looking at Barton.  _You used the magic of Yggdrasil to command your lover to do your bidding_.

Anna had apologized to the archer, giving him a heartbreaking look.  _I needed one last favor_ , she'd said.

Which meant that whatever had just happened? It was apparently all part of Anna-girl's plan. Whatever the magic of Yggdrasil was, she'd used it to  _make_ Coulson miss the warning,  _make_  Fury give the order to Barton, and  _make_  Barton fire the killshot.

It was all so disgustingly tragic, because even after going beyond what duty she owed to the world, Anna still paid the ultimate sacrifice, still sacrificed herself to save the whole planet. And although it  _was_  very noble and honorable of her to do so, Tony just can't let it go, can't let her stay dead.

But to do that, he'll need a plan. Thor said that a soul went to either Valhalla or Niflheim. What if he goes in, grabs her soul—?

But no. He'd have to find her soul first, and since they were supposedly where every soul went, then those places had to be huge, and who the hell knew where Anna-girl's soul would be? And besides, how the hell would he get there in the first—

The Tesseract glows silently in her chest, looking like a parody of his arc reactor as it mocks him from where it lay.

It's not that Tony doesn't think about what he's doing—his body just processes his subconscious thoughts and reasonings faster than his conscious mind can thoroughly dissect them. So when he gracelessly and abruptly yanks the arrow free to get it out of his way and reaches for the Tesseract, he doesn't do it unthinkingly, and as the yells of his new teammates reach his ears and the blue-white light sears into his retinas, Tony has one last thought:

'I am  _so_  dead when Pepper gets home.'

 

* * * * *

Loki smiled deviously. "You are going to change everything."

Anna raised an eyebrow. "Change everything…what?" she asked. "What's everything? What does that even—" She stopped talking when it all abruptly clicked together. "Wait," she murmured, "are you… Son of a bitch, are you talking about  _history?"_

"Indeed, I am," Loki confirmed, and her mind raced with the infinite possibilities now available to her.

Her father was her first thought. She could save his life, get to know him, finally have a  _dad_  to grow up with. Her mother wouldn't be a sad widow who sacrificed her relationship with her daughter in favor of clinging to her dead husband via his Fortune 500 company.

She could save Uncle Rhodey. Keeping him alive would mean that the Avengers would never disband the way they did after his death. Uncle Bruce would stay, wouldn't get Uncle Rhodey killed, and then Uncle Steve wouldn't have to follow after Uncle Bruce when he hulks out and decimates a few South American towns.

She could even save Aunt Tasha—get to know the woman who was supposed to be her godmother. Maybe then Clint wouldn't have left the Avengers after she died, and she would've grown up with him as her uncle, not her mentor-slash-crush.

She could make life better—make the world a place where the Avengers hadn't faded into the history books.

"What do I have to do?" she asked, because now that she had this option, she wasn't fucking going to say no to it.

Loki shifted, tilting his head at her. "You are willing?" he asked back.

 _Of course I'm willing, motherfucker!_  she wanted to yell. "I am," she said instead, feigning calm.

"Then you will first listen to my tale," Loki replied, "for there is much you do not know, Lady Anna."

"I've heard the stories, Loki. I already know everything I have to," she argued, wanting to get it over with.

He clucked his tongue. "Then you know the price you must pay to travel to the past?"

"I don't care what it is!" she finally screamed, stepping right up to him. "I already fucking said I'll do it! So go on! Magic away! Like,  _now_  would be nice—!"

"You will never exist again." She breathed heavily as she looked up at him, stunned into silence at his words. Loki looked down his nose at her. "That is the price you pay."

She reared back, stunned. "Bullshit," she called after swallowing heavily.

"I know what you think of doing," Loki said softly, his eyes kinder despite the bright red hue. "You wish to save those you know—those you've lost in your young life. You think to fix  _your_  life."

Hearing it emphasized like that sent shame through her. There was an army of alien terrorists razing New York to the ground, and what she wanted to do was make sure her family would be alive and complete to see it.

Yeah, that was pretty fucking selfish of her.

"I can tell you now that you will fail in that regard," he added, "as in my understanding, most of those events happened because of you."

Anna staggered back, turning around to keep Loki from seeing the truth leak out of her eyes.

He's right. Anna knew that. She knew that her father and godmother had died protecting the hospital she was being born in. She knew Clint had left because Natasha Romanoff had died and it hurt him to look at Anna and know that she carried her godmother's name while being the reason for Natasha's unexpected end.

She remembered vividly that Uncle Bruce and Aunt Betty had taken her out for ice cream because she'd asked them to, and then those people attacked them and the other Avengers came to defend them, only for Uncle Rhodey to take a lethal hit aimed at a very distracted, very  _human_  Uncle Bruce because  _he_  was protecting  _her_  from getting hurt.

She remembered Uncle Steve telling her mother that he'd been tasked with finding Uncle Bruce after he left to find his kidnapped girlfriend, because the Hulk had been spotted destroying several small towns in Argentina and he probably wouldn't be back any time soon. And he never did come back or send a postcard at all.

She remembered her and her mother suddenly living alone in what was once a loud, lively home.

It  _was_  all on her. Her dad's death, her godmother's death, her Uncle Rhodey's death, Aunt Betty's kidnapping, Uncle Bruce's leaving, Uncle Steve's following, her mom giving her away because poor little Anna Stark wasn't strong enough to deal with a couple of rapists and had to be saved by Uncle Thor two weeks later, and the expression on Uncle Thor's face when he heard—

God. God, that was  _all on her_ —

It was all her fault—

She's the one who…

She's the one who needs to change things.

To change  _everything_.

If the price of going back was to never exist again, then Loki definitely couldn't do it. He was a god, and…and he had a family to think of.

And Anna? Well, that's why Loki chose  _her_. Her family had been torn apart  _because_  she'd been born. Without her to screw that up? Her father and godmother would be alive, Clint wouldn't have run away, Uncle Rhodey wouldn't have died and Uncle Bruce and Uncle Steve wouldn't have left. And Uncle Thor…

Anna knew that he'd suffered the most because of her. Not only had he lost his friends one by one, he'd had to retreat to Asgard to bury himself in princely obligations and pretend that it was okay to take her in, that it wasn't her fault he had to save her from rapists while the man-made Bifrost prototype overloaded and killed Aunt Jane and her team and everyone else inside the blast radius, including her well-meaning and desperate Aunt Darcy, who'd only been there in the first place to send Thor to find Anna.

God, more than fifty men and women died because Uncle Thor went off to save one careless, un-alert and damaged fifteen-year-old girl who didn't even deserve to live. Not after all the pain and death and suffering she'd single-handedly caused.

It was all her fault. Without her—if she'd never existed, never been born—the Avengers would be alive and whole. Aunt Darcy and Aunt Jane would be alive, Uncle Thor wouldn't have suffered through so much, Clint wouldn't be so  _angry_  all the time, and her mother wouldn't be so  _sad_.

"What do I have to do?" she asked once more, sniffling, and only then did she realize she was crying.

"Look at me." She wiped her face before turning around to face him, and Loki pressed his blue lips together, as if forcing himself to keep from commenting on her tears. "Will you hear my tale?" She sniffled again and nodded, folding her legs underneath her as she sat down on the sandy ground. "Thank you," Loki said.

And then he starts the story.

She knew most of it already—that he fell off the Bifrost bridge, reappeared on Earth, tried to take over and got beat back by the new group called The Avengers, then was taken back to Asgard to face his punishment.

What she hadn't known was that he'd been possessed for most of it.

"Thanos," he told her, "was a Titan warlord once beloved by Death Incarnate. He fancies himself her avatar, her harbinger, and indeed, he has slain many a body to offer their souls to her cause. In the beginning of my acquaintanceship with Thanos, I was a slighted man, intent on causing the same hurt I felt when I found out I was not a true son of Odin, but part of a race of creatures that most Æsir feared. But as the days passed, I recognized my folly. My father had disapproved of many actions done by my hand, but he had always forgiven me and reminded me simply that I was his son."

"Aw," Anna cooed.

Loki raised an eyebrow. "Quite," he simply commented. "And so I appeared to Thanos and gave him my farewell."

"And he wasn't happy about it."

"Actually, he was deeply amused," Loki told her, frowning. "That's when he took me—torturing my mind and body until I was pliable enough to be controlled."

Anna hissed. "Motherfucker."

"…quite," Loki decided to say. "After he had gained control of my body, he proceeded with his plans to acquire the Tesseract. Using my magic, he was able to pass into Midgard and use me to implement the plan. At first, I believed his intentions were to simply harness the cube's power to attain godhood and join Death in her cause. However, he didn't have me bring him the Tesseract once I had it in my possession. Instead, he opened a portal to allow his army to come and decimate what they could. Nevertheless, his goals—as you know—were thwarted by my brother and his friends, and my body and the Tesseract were returned here to Asgard, whereupon my body was chained down here to atone for my crimes against both Jötunheim and Midgard."

"Wow," she breathed. "That's not cool. You never told anyone about this?"

"I couldn't," he replied with a tight expression on his face. "Thanos had silenced me rather effectively. He did not wish for anyone to learn of him or his plans until it was too late." Loki sighed. "And so now you know the truth. Do you still wish to continue?"

"Hell yeah!" she snapped, making him jerk a little in surprise. "It's not right—you being under mind-control and punished for something you didn't do. And Thanos definitely needs to be stopped."

Loki seemed to turn bluer, but he shook his head quickly and cleared his throat. "Then let us continue," he said. "As you can see, I remained here below the palace for well over twenty years. It was only quite recently that I discovered why Thanos allowed my body to be captured and brought to Asgard."

Anna caught on. " _Not_  for the Tesseract?"

"Not  _just_ ," he emphasized. "There is an artifact in the weapons vault called the Gauntlet of Infinity, which grants its wearer the ability to manipulate reality. That is what Thanos wishes to have."

She pieced it all together rapidly. "So he used the Tesseract to make it look like you were just gonna use it to open a portal and send in your alien army for the purpose of invading and subjugating Earth, when  _in fact_ , it was all just a ploy so that when Thor came to Earth, he didn't suspect anything else going on. And then when you 'lost,'" she quoted, "the battle for Earth, Thor took you back here, not knowing that Thanos was using you as a spy to see how he can get to the Gauntlet of Infinity, which was the real prize all along. Oh, man," she sighed, feeling a little tingle run through her at how incredibly diabolical the plan was. "That's kind of brilliant."

"Indeed," Loki nodded. "And so to truly thwart Thanos, you must return to a point in time just before the Chitauri's invasion and free me from his control."

Anna snorted. "Yeah, sure. I'll just snap my fingers and…" she trailed off as Loki gave her a look. "Seriously? How the hell am I supposed to do  _that?"_  The answer was obvious of course, but her mind was just blown at the realization that holy motherfucker, but Loki was pretty fucking powerful shit, man. "Your magic can  _do that?"_

"I  _am_  holding you in limbo right now," he reminded her.

Anna gave a low, impressed whistle. "Damn."

Loki shifted, turning bluer once again and what the hell, was he  _blushing?_  "I shall pass my magic onto you," he continued gruffly, "in order for you to release me from Thanos's hold."

Anna debated whether or not to call him out on the blushing thing, but decided that she could just give his younger self hell about it later. Heh. "And then abracadabra, you're free to go?" she asked instead.

Loki raised both eyebrows, but apparently got the gist of it since he said, "In a manner of speaking, yes."

Anna frowned at his choice of words. "Okay, what aren't you telling me about this little magic spell?" she asked, folding her arms together.

He might've looked sheepish—Anna couldn't tell with the blue face. "In order to pass the spell on, it would have to be done with a kiss."

She narrowed her eyes at him. "What. The  _fuck?"_

Loki sighed. "Most spells that deal with magical transference are triggered by touch and guided by breath. This is one of them."

Her teeth gnashed together as she growled. "I'm.  _Not_. Kissing  _you_."

"Then we are doomed," he deadpanned. Anna snorted, feeling oddly amused by the entire thing. Must be shock or something—she  _was_  still dying after all.

She sighed. "No tongue, right?"

"No tongue?" Loki echoed, looking a little lost before realization bloomed in his eyes. "No, no. Just a press of lips will do."

"Good. Fine," she agreed, relieved. "Weird, but fine."

Suddenly, Loki's face turned expressionless. "Is it because I am in this form?" he asked her.

"What? No!" Anna answered, confused at his reaction. "It's because you're sort of my uncle. I was adopted by your brother, remember?"

Loki's expression softened. "I see," he said. "I…I suppose haven't quite reconciled the fact that you are indeed a part of…my family."

"Ditto," she shrugged. "It's not like we see each other all the time. How can it sink in, right?"

"Indeed."

They shared a long, awkward moment of silence.

"Right," Anna said, shaking her head. "Anything else?"

"Two more things," Loki nodded. "There are rules to time-traveling, especially to the past. The first is," he started, "tell no mortal of their future. Not even a hint. You, and you alone, will drop the ripples in their ponds. Should anyone else know of what's to come for them, we may end up with the same unfortunate events as our current present."

She blinked, turning that over in her head. "What, like a self-fulfilling prophecy?"

He smiled. "Precisely."

"So," she nodded, tapping her fingers on her knee. "No to telling people about what's gonna happen to them. Check. Wait," she tacked on as a thought occurs to her. "Does that mean I can't tell them  _anything_  about their future or is there something they  _can_  know? Like, my family, for instance," she added hopefully. "Can my parents know they're my parents?"

"No," Loki answered abruptly. "Your true name must **never** pass from your lips, nor should you speak of the lineage you come from. This is the second rule."

"True name?" she echoed, focusing on that part instead of the 'no' part, because hell, she'd really been looking forward to getting to know the younger version of her parents—especially her dad. "What, like my birth name? That's fine," she added before he can say anything potentially snarky. "No one uses it anymore unless I'm in trouble. It's too freaking long. Why do you think they call me Anna?"

"Very good, then," Loki nodded. "Is there anything else you would like to know?"

"Yes," she's saying before she can really think about it. Anna swallowed and looked to the floor. "When I die…" she paused, thinking about it. "Will it hurt?" Because she's done the hurt part of it—rebar and crushed knees, anyone?

"…no," Loki said quietly.

Anna willingly swallowed the lie. "That's it."

Loki nodded. "Then let us begin," he said. "Lady Thorsdóttir—"

"Seriously, don't call me that."

"—do you accept the task of returning to the past to change all that has happened now?"

Anna sobered up, suddenly feeling the solemnity of the question. "I do accept."

"Do you accept the price—" Loki asked her softly, "of the loss your existence in the future to be—which shall be made true the moment you arrive in the past?"

Her mouth dried, because holy fuck, that soon? Her entire existence, all her accomplishments, all the memories and relationships—gone before her parents can even  _conceive_  her?

God. Fuck.  _God_ , but she's no hero, and hearing it said like that makes her tempted to say no.

Loki was no hero either, and for all the flowery words he'd weaved, a part of her had always been aware—ever since he made his offer—that he's only doing this because it'll get him his revenge.

And because she's no hero, Anna knew that if she was in his shoes, she'd do anything— _anything_ —to take her revenge too.

And god, but was that still even an option anymore? Because really, she knew that if she didn't do this, she'll going to lose the last four members of her broken mortal family to Thanos's latest invasion, and not even Loki's golden immortal brother can defeat Thanos on his own.

The world—her world—needed to be avenged, and who better to do it than the full set of Earth's Mightiest Heroes?

So— "I accept," she croaked, feeling awful and sick as she sealed her fate to save the world.

"Then when you are ready," Loki told her, "we shall perform the transference of magic that will release me from Thanos's hold, and then I shall cast the spell that will bring you through time. You shall arrive at S.H.I.E.L.D.'s floating ship, and there, you must gather your bearings. Once you have, you'll find me caged in their detention level. Get close,  _transfer_  my magic, and the spell will do the rest."

"Okay," she nodded, swallowing as she jerkily stood up. "Let's do this." She jumped, startled when a mist of gold and green coalesced beside her, forming a Loki that wasn't blue, red-eyed or naked. Anna's suddenly grateful for the darkness. It was dim enough that her eyes aren't constantly pulled to his man-parts, because ogling her sort-of-uncle wouldn't help the daddy issues she clearly had. Her attraction to Clint was bad enough—

"Oh my god, Clint!"

"Pardon?" he and the doppelganger asked together.

"Clint!" she exclaimed. "If I go to that particular time in the past, he'll still be mind-controlled by Thanos too!"

"I am not quite sure I know this 'Clint'—"

"He's the arrow-guy," Anna told him absently, waving a hand.

"Ah, him," the Lokis nodded. "Yes, well, I recall that he had joined my brother and his friends during the invasion, yes?"

"Yeah, but isn't there a way to you know, un-mind-control him earlier too?"

"I'm not sure," they frowned. "Perhaps the scepter can undo the magic it cast on those controlled, but I am not certain of this. Thanos never allowed me such knowledge."

Anna tried not to look eager. "So…I can't kiss him?"

"No!" both Lokis protested loudly, their voices echoing through the sealed cave. "Should you pass on my magic to anyone but me, then they will die! No other body will be able to contain power such as mine."

"Oh," she said weakly, now horrified that she'd entertained the thought at all. "Okay then. Good to know."

Loki considered her reaction. "You…are concerned? Why?" And then his eyebrows rise high. "You like him!"

To her chagrin, Anna full-on blushed, and she tilted the torch away so that neither Loki couldn't see it so easily. "Shut  _up_ —no, I don't!" she denied badly, too flummoxed to properly lie.

"Isn't he your father's age?" they pushed. "I was led to believe that such attractions were…"

"What?" Anna demanded defensively. " _Abnormal?_  Yeah, trust me," she scoffed, "I know that."

"But you cannot help feeling what you do," they concluded, both sounding too wise for the conversation.

Oddly enough, that's exactly what Anna needed to hear to back down. "Yeah," she sighed, hiding her face behind her free hand. "It's sick and wrong and in another life, he could've been another uncle to me. Hell, he's so hung up on the Black Widow that he's never even considered  _dating_  anyone in the last twenty years!" she added morosely. "And I can't even blame him for it because this whole attraction thing is just all on me. All he's ever done is be his normal, bastard self."

Both Lokis looked like they'd give anything to get out of the conversation, but they still considerately gave their input. "Well, perhaps it isn't all on you," they said. "From what I recall of Tony Stark, he was a…what's the term? Asshole?" Anna snorted, but jerked her head in a nod. "Yes. Well, from what I remember of your Clint, he was also one such man. Perhaps you are projecting—"

"Oh,  _hell no_ ," Anna snapped. "You are  _not_  saying that I want to fuck my own…" She shuddered in disgust, not even able to complete the sentence. "Look, I know all about Electra complexes and having daddy issues. I've read all the books about it, and I  _know_  it's weird. I just…can't help it." She huffed, frazzled at the insinuation that she wanted to sleep with her dead father. "Can we move on now?"

"You're the one who brought it up," Loki grumbled, his doppelganger echoing his words. "But I digress," he added quickly when she opened her mouth. "Are you ready then, Lady Anna?" The not-blue-skinned Loki-double stepped into her personal space, and Anna leaned back because fuck, Loki was  _tall_.

She nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, I think so."

He chuckled darkly, green eyes glinting knowingly down at her. "Liar," he murmured, pressing his lips against hers.

Their lips literally spark, and Anna tried to pull back in alarm but Loki moved his hand up to keep them together. His lips are cool and soft and Anna kind of wanted to nibble them after a few moments have passed, but then she just felt weird about it because hello—uncle!

Oh god, she already  _has_  a daddy complex, she didn't need an uncle complex too.

Forever seemed to pass until his hand was pulled away, and by then, the doppelganger looked like it was fading out.

And then—as if things weren't fucking freaky enough already—both Lokis started chanting.

While they chanted, Anna's body began to glow. She lifted her hands up to get a closer look, but that triggered an ache in her muscles that hadn't been there before. She grunted when her skin began to prickle irritably, then groaned when her bones suddenly felt like they were melting.

And then something latched tightly onto her arm and  _pulled_ —

 

* * * * *

Tony falls back on his ass, fumbles to lift his faceplate, and twists to the side to retch. Having been too busy putting the Thanos puzzle together, he hadn't had much to eat over the past few days, so nothing but a few crushed blueberries comes out of his mouth.

Which was good. It was bad enough form that he was apparently trying to puke in front of his new teammates—no need for him to bring out the buffet.

"Stark, are you okay?" he hears Steve's voice say from somewhere above him.

No, he wants to say. No, he's not okay. He just watched his little girl trade her existence in exchange for the safety of the whole world.

How the hell could he ever be okay again?

Trembling, he pushes himself off the ground and reaches for Anna, pulling her gently from Loki's grip. Without another word to his protesting companions, Tony launches himself off the roof, his dead daughter in his arms.

"Gently, Jarvis," he tells his AI, and the thrusters allows him to land as softly as possible.

"Shall I call Miss Potts, sir?" Jarvis asks him as sensitively as Tony had enabled him to.

Tony has to swallow the sob that lodged itself in his throat before answering. "No. No, Pepper…she doesn't have to know."

"Sir, I strongly advise that you reconsider," Jarvis replies. "This is a great secret to keep from her. Should she find out—"

"I didn't say I wouldn't tell her," Tony snaps irately as he put Anna down on the couch. "Just…not yet."

That seems to placate Jarvis. "Very wellllll, sirrrrr…"

Tony stiffens at the sudden distortion in Jarvis's voice, straightening up to scan the room. He's forced to lift his faceplate up when the Heads-Up Display inside his helmet suddenly fizzles out, and he automatically turns to check on Anna—

His heart stops at the sight of a strangely dressed woman hovering over Anna.

"Who the fuck are you?" he spits out, struggling to move and cursing harshly when the suit didn't respond to him.

The woman glances up at him—dark hair, pale skin, luminous eyes—briefly before turning her attention back to Anna, her hand reaching up to grip Anna's shoulder.

"Let go of her," Tony yells when the air around them starts to waver, and his scream of "No!" echoes through the room as the woman disappears, taking his daughter with her. " _Anna!"_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Flashback** : The Anna part was an extension of the prologue, and it focuses on what Anna and Loki discussed prior to sending her to the past. And Tony, if you didn't get it, sees the memory of that moment when he touched the Tesseract. How and why? Well, you're just gonna have to read on to find out!
> 
>  **Heads-Up Display** : My source is the Iron Man 2008 movie. Tony really does call it Heads-Up Display.


	14. to regretting your actions

"This is not your fault."

Clint huffs in disbelief, raking his fingers through his hair as he's told those very words for a second time. "I shot her," he reminds the god as he sat on the ground beside him. "It was my arrow that killed her, my hands that did the shooting. I'm responsible."

And god, but this whole experience was just a never-ending barrage of mindfucks, because Thor's kid is apparently his lover in the future, and she'd used some sort of magic to make him kill her to save the world.

He could barely swallow back the laugh of hysteria that bubbles up in his throat.

"Do listen, Agent Barton, for I will only say this to you once," Loki speaks up, catching his attention. "Thanos was a cold-hearted warlord who sought to reap this planet of every single life that breathed—every animal, every plant, every man, woman and child. He would've taken no prisoners, no livestock, not a single life would've been spared." The god slowly takes him by the wrists and holds his hands up, as if showing them to Clint. "These hands loosed the arrow that eliminated that possibility. These hands saved lives, saved  _worlds,_ and make no mistake," Loki tacks on, "'twas not just your world you saved, but mine and Thor's, as well every future world Thanos would have gone on to destroy."

Well, when he put it like that… "She's still dead," Clint mutters, staring at the spot where Loki had caught her. Where she had  _died_. "Thanos…he said she was my lover."

"I heard," Loki replies quietly. "But know this, Agent Barton," he adds. "Thanos has lied before. What's to say he spoke the truth then?"

The words were almost comforting, if not for one thing. "He made me kiss her," he shares, belatedly remembering that the god had been there when it happened. "She kissed back. And…it felt like she knew me, like she'd kissed me many times before. I felt it then," he whispers, still feeling the ghost sensation of her lips on his, her fingers in his hair, her body pressed up against him. "I could tell she loved me."

 _I needed one last favor,_ she'd said before she died. How many times had he helped her before? Would he ever meet her again? When?

"I don't know," Loki says, and Clint realizes he'd been asking the questions out loud. "But—"

" _Anna!"_ They both jerk back when Stark's voice came through not only their comms, but also from down below. That's when Clint notices that Natasha, Captain America and Thor seemed frozen in midair for about two seconds before they continue the jump they'd apparently made over the edge of the roof.

"Thor!" Loki calls out, lunging towards them, and Clint was right behind him, his heart thudding harshly at the sight of Natasha disappearing from his view. The three of them seem to have landed well though, and they looked up at Loki with confusion on their faces.

"What is it, brother?" Thor yells up to them.

" _No!"_ Stark screams, drawing the threesome's attention.

"Tony?" Dr. Banner's form suddenly darts past them. "Tony! What's going on? What happened?" Clint could hear him asking. He suddenly remembers that Banner had been excluded from recent events, having chosen to stay down on the landing pad when everyone else decided to head up.

A hand suddenly grips his shoulder, and Clint feels his entire body squeeze down and stretch out before his view changes from rooftop to indoors.

Whoa, what the hell—?

"By the Allfather," Loki says from beside him, and Clint turns around to see that he was now inside the penthouse.

Holy motherfucking shit, did they just  _teleport?_

…fucking awesome!

The giddiness of his realization goes away at the sight of Stark ripping his couch from the floor and tossing it across the room. The man looks enraged, like a bull in a fight against a matador, only there was no flag waving for him to focus his attention on.

"Tony!" Banner grips his arm, forcing it down with impressive strength that Clint wouldn't have guessed he had in his normal form. "Tony,  _what happened?"_

"She's gone," Stark howls, his body slumping down now that his momentum had been broken. "She took her. She took Anna."

"Who?" Banner asks, looking up automatically at the only woman in the room. Natasha shrugs, looking as lost as all of them.

"Don't know," Stark pants, and…were those  _tears?_  Mother of fuck, Tony Stark was  _crying_. "Don't know who she was."

"Okay, okay, what did she look like?" Banner tries instead.

Stark inhales deeply, looking more focused now. "Pale," he rasps. "Pretty. Black hair. Glowing eyes."

"No." Clint turns his head to Thor and Loki, who'd spoken at the same time. They look horrified. "It can't be," Thor adds, shaking his head.

"What?" Stark demands, getting up and looking ready to throttle Thor. "You know her? Who was she?"

"She is the ruler of Niflheim," Loki answers, swallowing heavily.

"Niflheim," Stark repeats. "The place where souls go. Why the fuck did she take Anna's body then?"

"Anna shouldn't be in Niflheim," Thor moans, looking like he wanted to cry too. "She died a warrior's death! She should be in Valhalla!"

"Why  _the fuck_  did she take Anna's body?" Stark roars, looking crazed, and only Banner's hold on the billionaire's shoulder kept him from lunging for Thor.

Loki shakes his head. "She is a time-traveler," he says. "She died outside her time. There is no precedence for it. Perhaps—" A deafening whine blasts through the air, cutting Loki off. Everyone turns sharply to the open balcony, where the sound had come from.

"What in the world…?" Captain America mutters, jogging quickly outside and looking up. "Guys," he calls, giving them a quick glance before returning his attention to the sky. "We have a problem."

* * * * *

"Wasn't the Tesseract in Anna's chest?" Romanoff asks as she took several shots at the Chitauri flying past her. "Someone explain to me how this happened!"

"Don't think anyone has a clue, Nat," Barton replies, letting his arrows loose on the enemy. "Maybe that Niflheim chick had something to do with it."

" _Stop chitchatting_ ," Stark snaps angrily, firing several blasts at the forces following him around. " _Call it, Captain_."

"Right. Loki," Rogers says, turning to him. "I need you to work on closing the portal."

"All right," Loki nods, teleporting instantly to the reactor.

" _Until that portal's closed, our priority is containment,_ " he hears Rogers say through the communicator as he studies the device the Tesseract was powering. " _Barton, I want you on the roof—eyes on everything, call out patterns and strays. Stark, you've got the perimeter. Anything gets more than 3 blocks out, you turn it back, or you turn it to ash_."

" _Right,_ " Stark replies, blasting up into the sky. The sound covers up the fact that Loki too was blasted across the roof, the Tesseract forming a barrier that reflected the burst of magic he's sent at it.

" _Thor,_ " Rogers continues as Loki whips his cloak off his head and pushes up to one knee, glaring at the damned cube, " _you gotta try and bottle-neck that portal. Slow 'em down. You've got the lightning—light the bastards up_." As he walks back to the mechanical contrivance, Loki glances over at the sound of Mjölnir's whirl and sees Thor as he flew off the balcony without another word. " _Doctor Banner_ ," the captain adds, " _can you_ — _?"_

" _We need 'im, Bruce,_ " Stark's voice suddenly cuts in. " _It's gonna get messy—you know that. We need your bigger, meaner self to play_."

" _No problem,_ " Banner agrees easily. Loki paused in his re-inspection of the device, surprised at the man's willingness to turn into the monster he'd constantly kept contained.

" _Are you sure?"_ Rogers asks.

" _Of course he's sure. It's an alien invasion—practically an invitation for him to let loose and party!"_

" _I don't see how that's a party,_ " Romanoff mutters.

" _Agent Romanoff, you and I are heading for the streets—keep the fighting away from civilians,_ " Rogers adds.

Loki is once more distracted when Barton suddenly appears, pulling himself up on the ledge. "How's that going?" the mortal asks, nodding at the device and looking unwinded at the climb.

"The power surrounding the cube is impenetrable," he says to the archer. "My magic is useless against it."

A low groan suddenly comes from behind them, and Loki looks back to see the old doctor coming to. He tuts disapprovingly as he realized that his brother had left the man there.

Barton was at his side quickly. "Doctor, you all right?" he asks.

Selvig jerks back, but then relaxes when he catches sight of Barton's face. "I'm fine," he says, glancing behind Barton to see him. He froze. "You."

"Relax, doctor," Barton tells him, trying to placate the old man, and Loki turns back to the device that housed the cube, giving them the illusion of privacy as well as to return to his assigned task. He still had to break through the barrier somehow.

Perhaps if he used more power?

"He was one of us," Barton continues as Loki powers up once more. "Loki isn't the bad guy—we…we got  _him_  already."

"But—"

Loki doesn't hear whatever the old man had said, too busy being blasted into the air. A small groan escapes him after he lands quite roughly, and when he opens his eyes, the full length of Stark Tower greets his vision.

" _I'll give you a nine for the form, but only a six on the landing,_ " Stark speaks up, and the Iron Man armor appears in his line of sight. " _You okay down there?"_

"I'll live," he wheezes embarrassingly.

" _Brother?"_ Thor pipes up. " _Is that you? What has happened?"_

" _Loki fell off the roof,_ " Barton says. " _And he better get his ass up and off the ground. I have a way to close the portal._ "

"How?" Loki asks, holding his breath as he felt his spine shift, clearly broken. The healing would be slow, as he'd not had a bite of Idunn's golden apples for almost a full four seasons.

" _Doctor Selvig put a safe key to cut the power source,_ " Barton says. " _But we'll need the scepter_."

" _It's at the Helicarrier,_ " Romanoff replies. " _Coulson and I hid it_."

" _Well then, somebody'd better go get it,_ " Barton tells her, " _'cause it's the only thing that can get past that barrier and remove the cube from the reactor_."

" _Loki,_ " Stark cuts in, " _you can teleport someone with you, right?"_

Loki holds back a groan at the thought of moving. "I am currently incapacitated," he hisses.

" _What? What happened?"_ Thor demands, with Rogers echoing his brother's words.

" _I was wondering why you weren't getting up,_ " Stark muses. " _What's wrong with you? Your ego bruised or something?"_

Loki shifts slightly, feeling the broken bones grind together. "Not to belittle the gravity of the situation, but my spine is currently broken."

" _Ouch,_ " several voices chorus empathically.

" _Okay then. Do you have some sort of teleportation spell that can be used on someone even if you're not with them?"_ Stark asks after several moments.

"I do, actually," Loki answers after a second's consideration.

" _I'm pretty busy right now, Stark,_ " Romanoff speaks up at the same time, grunting slightly.

" _Oh not you, Natashalie,_ " Stark says lightly. " _Coulson. He's getting the spear as we speak_."

* * * * *

Natasha almost growls. "What do you mean Coulson's getting the spear? He's injured! He shouldn't be out of  _bed_ , let alone  _wandering_  around the Helicarrier!"

" _I'm quite capable of taking care of myself, Agent Romanoff,_ " Phil's voice comes on her comm for the first time. " _And I'm in a wheelchair, if it makes you feel any better_."

It doesn't. " _Damn it, Stark_ ," she complains. " _He can't come here—it's too dangerous!_ "

" _Too late,_ " Phil says. " _I've got the spear, Loki_."

" _Do hold onto it,_ " Loki tells him. " _And this might feel a little odd._ "

Natasha spends the next five seconds ducking alien blasts and holding her breath.

" _Holy crap, that was cool!"_ Phil suddenly exclaims.

" _I know, right?"_ Clint asks.

Taking that to mean Phil had arrived safely, Natasha vows to give her handler a piece of her mind and moves out of her hiding place, going back to work.

* * * * *

Phil practically collapses in Clint's grip when he arrives, and holy crap, that was cool!

"I know, right?" Clint says, and Phil realizes he's said the words aloud.

Fighting back a blush, Phil hefts the golden stick up to his agent. "Close it," he tells Clint, who takes the spear and sets him down carefully beside a man Phil recognizes as Erik Selvig. "Doctor Selvig," he greets as Clint moves away. "It's good to see you again."

Selvig manages to crack a wry smile. "I'd say the same," he says, "but the world's always ending when we meet."

Phil realizes the man was right and laughs for his sake. "I don't do it intentionally," he replies.

"Doctor!" Clint yells, peering at the reactor. "How do I do this?"

"Excuse me," Selvig says as he gets up. Phil watches the man pull up a knocked-over console and point to a spot on the reactor. "There, at the crown."

Clint obediently starts to push the spear through. " _I can close the portal,_ " he calls through the comms. " _Guys, do you copy? I can close it. I can shut the portal down_."

" _Do it!"_ Captain America replies firmly.

Stark, ever the showboat pony, pipes in. " _No, wait!"_

" _Stark, these things are still coming!"_ the captain reminds him tersely.

And then the man gives them the bad news. " _I got a nuke coming in,_ " he says. " _It's gonna blow in less than a minute_."

Phil looks to Clint, who shoots him a worried look.

Well, fuck.

* * * * *

" _Stark, do you hear me?"_ Fury's voice comes in, surprising Tony as he spun through the air to avoid seven blasts from seven different sources. " _You have a missile headed straight for the city_."

The scathing words that had been ready to leap off his tongue dies before they could be heard. "How long?" he asks instead, firing off several repulsor-rounds into two of his attackers.

" _Three minutes, max. Payload would wipe out midtown_."

 _Shit_ , he thinks, just as he realizes that there was a portal that leads to another world opened conveniently right over his tower. "Jarvis, put everything we've got into the thrusters."

"I just did, sir," his thoughtful AI says as they suddenly speed past all the loser aliens trying to keep on his tail. Hah! Suckers.

" _I can close the portal,_ " Barton speaks up. " _Guys, do you copy? I can close it. I can shut the portal down_."

" _Do it!"_ Rogers snaps.

"No, wait!" Tony cries, his thoughts focused on the missile.

" _Stark, these things are still coming!"_ Rogers says tersely.

"I got a nuke coming in. It's gonna blow in less than a minute," he replies, obviously stunning them into silence because no one spoke up. Tony ducks under the Brooklyn bridge, then doubles back when he overshot and the nuke speed past him. Damn. "And I know  _just_  where to put it," he remembers to say as he catches up to the nuke and grips it carefully.

" _Stark,_ " Rogers murmurs, " _you know that's a one-way trip_."

He knows. He knows, but he doesn't acknowledge it. There was always a reason behind everything he does, even if he doesn't know what that reason really is at the time.

But this time, he knows exactly what his end-goal was.

"Save the rest for the turn, J," he says instead, focusing on the task at hand.

"Sir," Jarvis speaks up, sounding somber, "shall I try Miss Potts?"

Her picture comes up on the display, and Tony feels a pang reverberate around his arc reactor. "Might as well," he allows, and Jarvis dials her number. The phone rings for several seconds.

Pepper doesn't pick up.

Knowing that Pepper was in DC and away from all this makes it easy for Tony to shift his focus away from her, grit his teeth and set his frustrations on pushing the nuke when it was time to turn upwards. Jarvis doesn't fail him on this—the AI never failed him on anything, really—so Tony is able to direct the nuke to the sky before it could hit Pepper's baby.

Oh god. Pepper's baby. For some reason, he only just realized—no,  _accepted_  it as he speeds past the portal.

Anna was  _their_  daughter. A little piece of him and a little piece of her.

 _She has her mother's unbreakable spirit. And her father's impertinence,_ Thanos had said, and Tony remembers the code she used to hack in and out of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s servers, remembers asking himself how Jarvis had missed her when she seems to be Tony-Stark-level good, remembers thinking he'd recognized her eyes that first time he saw her… Well, now he knew why they looked so familiar—he saw them in the mirror every day.

Shit. How had he not seen the resemblance before? Anna looks  _so_  much like hi—

Tony gasps uselessly as the air filter stops functioning, his oxygen almost instantly cut off once he enters outer space.

"Sir, Miss Prrrrs—" Hopelessness sinks its jaws into him as Jarvis disconnects and Pepper's picture disappears when the display fizzles out, and left only the inky blackness of an offline helmet and the stunning yet horrifying view of an alien mothership, surrounded by the rest of the Chitauri fleet.

He could feel his body seizing up, his gloved hands parting with the nuke as it continues its journey up, past the waiting and now-surprised alien troops. Choking for breath, Tony could only keep his eyes open long enough to see the missile collide with the mothership, the blast exploding marvelously wide, somehow taking out the entire platoon that Tony was passing by as he fell.

And then, as the almost-forgotten sensation of the arc reactor shutting down reverberates from his chest and spread viciously through every nerve ending in his body, Tony closes his eyes, ready to embrace dea—

"Greetings, Lord Stark," a voice says, surprising him.

His body instinctively gasps for air, but while he receives no oxygen, he's still able to reorient himself. "You," he rasps when he sees the black-haired, green-eyed woman several seconds later. "Where is she? Where's Anna!"

The woman raises an eyebrow delicately, and the resemblance to Loki strikes Tony hard. "Now is that any way to treat an ally, Lord Stark?" she asks. "Especially one who seeks to return what has been lost?"

"Lost?" he echoes, feeling a little lost himself. "What—?" His voice fails him when she gestures beside her, where the still form of his little time-traveler floats midair. "Anna," he sighs, relieved to see her whole and unharmed.

Literally. The daughter-stealing bitch had fixed her up, somehow healing the burn on her flesh and mending it to leave her skin flawless. Her clothes, however, stays the same, char and soot still visible around the once-injured area. The Tesseract was, of course, gone from its previous place on her chest.

"Why did you take her?" he demands, moving his gaze back to the bitch kidnapper.

"As I said," she replies. "I seek to return what is lost." And then she waves a cylinder at him, pulling it out of thin air, damn magic. His eyes take in the smoky contents that looks almost like the smoke Thanos had been out of Loki's body. This smoke was mostly grey, however, with hints of gold and red in it.

"What's that?" Tony asks. "And who the hell do you think are you, anyway? What gives  _you_  the right to steal my daughter's body?"

She smiles. "I believe you answered your own question," she replies, standing straighter. "I am Queen Hela of Niflheim, Goddess of the Inglorious Dead."

Hearing it from her like that made it sound rather impressive, and at the reminder that she's the goddess of the  _dead_ , Tony realizes what the smoke writhing around inside the container could possibly be.

"Is that…is that  _Anna?"_ he croaks, suddenly wishing he wasn't in the suit, because it was offline and therefore heavy as fuck, so he couldn't lunge for the damn cylinder while he was in it.

"Indeed," Hela confirms, moving the canister to grip it with both hands. Tony eyes it like a hawk, silently praying that she doesn't drop the damn thing and break it. "The Lady Thorsdóttir and I struck a bargain. I am here to return her soul to her body."

Relief rushes through him. "Really?" he asks weakly. "That would be real awesome of you." Hela looks pleased at that and…was that a blush? Heh, cool. He just made a goddess-queen blush. The bar just went up for all the men in the world.

"Indeed," she repeats. "But I must ask two things of you in return."

"Anything," he doesn't hesitate to say.

"The Tesseract," she says. "You must keep it safe. Hide it away and let no one know where it rests. Especially her," she glances down at Anna.

Tony paused. "I think Thor and Loki are taking it to Asgard."

"No," Hela shakes her head. "Odin's vault is not the stronghold most believe it to be. The Tesseract was stolen from there once before; who's to say it will not be stolen again? Too many now know of its power, and it will call to the greedy hounds resting beyond the branches of Yggdrasil. Should the Tesseract fall into the wrong hands, war  _will_  come to both our realms, and we may not survive the most brutal of the invaders," she says firmly. "Earth has kept it safe for centuries. I know it can continue to do so for centuries more."

Tony prioritizes the bazillion questions that came to mind and asks, "Okay, fine. Where do I hide it then?"

Hela's gaze moves to his chest, and it takes Tony a few seconds to find the carriage her train of thought was at. "Um, no," he says plainly. "I can't. That thing emits gamma radiation, I'd die if I put that in there, and Pepper would totally kill me if that happened."

"Everything you said is redundant," Hela tells him, and before Tony can be insulted, she adds, "Especially since the same energy powers the device in your chest."

Tony automatically reaches for the arc reactor, but the stiffness of his suit deters his effort to touch it. "Wha…?" comes out of his mouth eloquently. Because he's pretty sure that his Starkanium-powered arc reactor does  _not_  emit gamma radiation one bit. He'd be a gooey pile of dead by now, if that was the case.

"And besides," Hela tacks on before he can point out that very detail, "I am a death goddess. Should you die from the Tesseract's influence, I shall simply heal your body and return you to it."

When his mind finally processes the words, Tony realizes he would find no sweeter deal than that. Anna and an unlimited-time warrant against dying via Tesseract in exchange for hiding the cube from everyone on the planet? Pfft, no sweat.

"Okay," he answers. "I can agree to that. What's your second thing?"

Hela grimaces. "You must sacrifice the knowledge you have of Lady Thorsdóttir's lineage."

Tony's breath hitches in his throat, and his first instinct is to immediately say 'No.' Catching himself, he asks, "Why?" instead, almost failing to get the word out of his mouth.

"'Tis part of the price she bargained," Hela explains. "For her to live, she must do so under the stipulations she and Loki's future self had agreed upon."

"That's bullshit!" Tony calls angrily even before she could finish. "I saw the memory—I know what she bargained. Loki said she can't  _tell_  anyone or say anything about who she really is and she  _hasn't_ —"

"But by seeing that very memory," Hela interrupts, "she  _has_  spoken of it to you, even if the words were not meant for your ears."

Tony seethes. "That's not fair! She already traded her existence away, I can't lose her completely!" He struggles for a strong argument, searching for an indisputable reason—a cause—that could make Hela change her mind. "She… She deserves to live with her family," he pleads, and oh no,  _Pepper_ , he thinks,  _I should've told her_.

Hela shakes her head. "I'm sorry, Lord Stark. Truly. But I must ask this of you. You must sacrifice your knowledge of her true lineage. And know," she adds, "that this agreement will stop you from realizing her identity once again."

A pained sound escapes his throat.

It wasn't fair. This whole thing is fucking bullshit.

Frantic, he tries to think of another way. But Hela was a goddess. If she was anything like Thor, then Tony could match her in a fight if he suit weren't fucking frozen in place. That must be why she disabled his movements.

Next plan.

…he had none. Desperation claws at him, enough that he tries to pray.  _God_ ,  _if you're real, you'll give me a way out of this,_ he thinks.  _She's mine. I don't want to forget that_.

"I'm sorry," Hela says, and she looks genuinely unhappy about the situation. "But that is the price for her life."

Tony squeezes his eyes shut and clenches his fingers into the padding of his gloves, wishing he could make a fist and dig his nails into his palm because fuck, this had to be a bad dream. It had to be.

How could he do this? How could he let go of her? He'd only just found out…shit, had it just been an hour? Less even? How was this fair? To her? To him? To  _Pepper?_

 _Oh, Pepper… Why didn't I tell you at once?_  he asks himself.  _What do I do, Pep?_

Unbidden, the memory surfaces from his mind.

 _Do you accept the price of the loss your existence in the future to be, which shall be made true the moment you arrive in the past?_  Loki had asked Anna in the memory he'd seen.

Anna—his too-brave baby girl—had looked pale and horrified when she replied,  _I accept_.

Now he knew how she felt, sacrificing her life in exchange for something so damn precious.

"I accept," he croaks, feeling the tears slip down his cheeks.  _Anna, I'm so, so sorry…_

Hela apparently didn't need anything more than that. She uncaps the cylinder and turns it upside down, and Tony watches through watery eyes as the smoke moves into Anna's suddenly gasping mouth. They're bathed in complete silence for the twenty seconds it takes for the smoke to settle into her body.

And when it was done, Hela moves back and nods to him. "Until we meet again, Lord Stark," she says regally, turning around.

Suddenly, Tony jolts up, his heart racing with the lingering sensation of shock and fear, his lungs screaming as he gasps for breath.

The sky looks clear and bright above him.

A rumbling roar fills the air, and Tony finally blinks and looks around, asking, "What the hell?" as he takes in Natashalie, Steve and Thor's relieved faces. "What just happened?" he asks further, realizing that his face-plate was gone and not at all attached to his helmet anymore. Oh, shit, did someone— "Please tell me nobody kissed me."

Steve slumps down a little, looking up at the sky. "We won." The words sent a thrill through him. Or maybe that was just relief. In any case, Tony relaxes as well, breathing out his relief and savoring the feel of a win.

"Why do you weep, Man of Iron?" Thor asks. That's about the only time he feels the tears trailing down to his ears and the pang of regret lodged in the back of his throat.

Abruptly, he remembers the deal he made with Hela, remembers that he'd figured out that Thor wasn't Anna's real father and had traded the secret of her real identity in order to get Anna's soul back into her body. For the life of him, Tony couldn't remember why he'd done such a thing. He traded knowledge away when knowledge was a precious commodity to him.

Damn, who the hell was Anna that he'd agree to that kind of deal?

"Tony?" Steve cuts into his thinking time. "Are you in pain? Is that why you're crying? Where—?"

"M'not  _crying,_ " he retorts quickly. "I'm fine. Hey! All right, good job guys!" he not-so-subtly segues as he catches sight of Big Green. "Let's just not come in tomorrow—let's just, ah, take a day."

And wow, was that his stomach?  _Damn, he was hungry_. He looks towards Bruce's ridiculously buff alter ego.

"Have you ever tried shawarma?"


	15. and finally, to new beginnings

**May 8, 2012**

Ever since Stark had woken up after going through the portal, Natasha could that something was off with him.

He had known. Stark had  _known_  Anna was his daughter—Natasha was sure of it, because why else would he have reacted so poorly when Anna's body had been stolen from him? But now he was calm as a clam, and not in the way that he'd accepted she was gone. No, if she'd judged his actions correctly, then it seems like he'd  _forgotten_  his discovery.

Natasha knows that no one else aside from her and Loki had deduced Anna's parentage—primarily because none of them were outright stating it—but everyone, even  _Rogers_  of all people, could tell there was something off about the big picture.

But that wasn't the point. The point was, how _had_ Stark forgotten about his daughter? Was it an effect of going into space? Was it during that time his arc reactor had failed? He didn't even react badly to Clint when they regrouped for the after-battle shawarma, though there was still a touch of coldness whenever he spoke to her partner.

And that was another can of worms she couldn't get out of her mind. Thanos said Clint had been Anna's lover in the future, but Anna couldn't have been more than twenty when she came to the past, and she wasn't even born yet. Clint was in his 30's now. That would make him around 50 when he and Anna…

Natasha drops that line of thought. Age didn't matter in such circumstances, and if Clint had loved her, then who was she to judge? After all, they weren't together before, they weren't together now, and apparently, they'll never get together at all.

But why was that? She knew well that Clint wouldn't refuse any advances she made, so did she simply _never_ give into her attraction to him? And Clint would obviously be alive enough to date Anna, so what—had she died? Had she moved away? Did they have a bad fight and simply never make up?

…did it really matter? He'd chosen another girl, in the end.

Damn. She was so compromised, wasn't she? Maybe…

Maybe this was why they never got together. Being compromised—having a weakness that anyone could find out about and exploit…

A huff escapes her. If Ivan could see her now, he'd probably give—

"Agent Romanoff, might we speak?"

Her thoughts disrupted, Natasha looks up and finds Loki hovering beside the empty seat across her. "Have a seat," she agrees, gesturing for him to sit. The park was still empty aside from the odd S.H.I.E.L.D. agent assigned to keep watch on the place, and even those last few graveyard-shift people were being replaced by the morning crew. Natasha had come to make sure everything was going well, burning out that restless energy she'd accumulated after being forced into taking a paid vacation.

But a vacation meant there'd be time to think about some things, and needless to say, she'd much rather be working.

"I need to…what's the term? Pick your brain?" he half-asks as he slid elegantly onto the bench. "I've been pondering some things, and I believe you to be aware of Lady Anna's true parentage."

Of  _course_  issues like that weren't easy to get rid of.

Natasha represses a sigh. "I am," she nods, resting her hands on the picnic table between them. "Does Thor know?"

"No," he replies. "My brother was… _is_ still very upset at her death. I thought it best to let the matter lie."

She folds her arms. "Does he blame Clint?"

"Yes," Loki sighs, a tinge of exasperation in his tone. "Despite Lady Anna's confirmation of Thanos's claim. He knows she used the magic of the World Tree to bring about her own death, but he cannot forget that it was Agent Barton who fired the arrow that killed her. He understands, but he has not forgotten."

She'd thought so. "You have my sincerest condolences," she tells him, realizing that the words hadn't really been said—to either god.

"On behalf of my brother, I thank you." Loki smiles wryly. "Though he never truly knew her, Thor feels responsible for her, and if Thanos's claim about her rank as an Asgardian duchess was true, then it means he had petitioned the Allfather to allow Lady Anna to join his personal court. He refuses to accept that she is not truly the daughter he believes he will have," he adds with a shake of his head. "I admit, his stubborn musings about her being second in line for the throne was what drove me here."

Natasha swallows as the similarities between her and Anna Stark suddenly become very vivid. "But she's not his kid," she states. "Does that mean she's  _not_ a duchess? If so, then she can't really  _be_  a part of Thor's court, right?"

"No, I believe she  _was,_ on both counts," Loki answers, frowning thoughtfully. "There had to be some foundation to Thanos's claims, after all. And though we know her to be…" he glances around in paranoia, " _not_  Thor's daughter, even I would not think to call someone a duchess instead of a princess."

"So you think her title as Duchess of Asgard is accurate," Natasha summarizes. "What's the problem there?"

"I simply do not understand why Thor would bid the Allfather to grant Lady Anna entry into Asgardian court," he tells her, his brow furrowing in frustration. "She is not his daughter, nor does she share blood family with him. At best, he is a titular uncle to her."

That sparks an idea in Natasha's head. "You know," she says slowly, "we have a practice here on Earth where parents assign guardians to their children in case they can no longer fulfill their parental duties."

"How would one fail to be a parent?" Loki asks, looking bewildered.

Natasha's gut tightens. "Death or even mental, emotional or physical incapacitation are the most common reasons for us humans," she replies, her mouth drying as her own words paint a dark picture of the future Anna Stark must've faced.

Loki's face lightens in understanding. "Ah yes," he muses. "But that would mean that either of Lady Anna's parents…"

"Yeah," she nods, sharing the somber mood that engulfed him. "Maybe Thor was her legal guardian."

But why Thor? What about Colonel Rhodes? He was the closest friend Tony Stark had—Pepper would have at least listed him as a potential foster parent in the event of…well. And if Natasha knew Tony Stark as well as she thought, then the colonel would've been his first choice as a guardian. The fact that Anna had even _needed_ a guardian implies that her parents had been... _incapacitated_  while she was young. In all honesty, Natasha thinks that Thor would've been chosen as her guardian only if…

Rhodey must be dead too, Natasha realizes. And maybe even Happy Hogan, whom she knew was a loyal friend to both Stark and Ms. Potts. Banner might even be in the running as Anna's guardian, though there was a big possibility that Pepper  _might_  have nipped that idea in the bud. And while Rogers and Stark were only just becoming friends, he would have probably been honored to be Anna's guardian.

And the only way the immortal god of thunder would've ended up as Anna's guardian was if everyone else was gone too.

"So he took her as his ward," Loki murmurs, interrupting her morbid thoughts. "That would indeed be enough for the Allfather to consider his request, though Lady Anna herself would have had to pass the test given to her."

"Test?" Natasha prods, stuffing her empathy into a box to focus on collecting facts.

"Well, we can't just accept anyone into the family, can we?" he points out.

Okay, now she was  _really_ curious. "What kind of test would she have faced?"

Loki shrugs slightly. "I know not for certain what test she was given," he says, "but if I know my…the Allfather," he amends, "he would have tried her wisdom, courage, strength of will, and perhaps even her skill with weapons."

"And whatever it was, Anna passed her test," Natasha murmurs, feeling a chill move up her spine as she realizes that they had never really seen Anna in action. Thanos had been the main concern, and before realizing—or believing—whose daughter she was, the most they had really worried about was Anna's motives for coming to the past.

Suddenly, guiltily, Natasha's glad the girl was dead.

Clearing her throat, she looks up at Loki, who was observing her closely. "You and I are much alike, Agent Romanoff," he says quietly. "We know what things we should fear."

That surprises her. "You were afraid of her?" she asks. "Why? You're a god."

Loki stares blankly at her for a moment before a cynical smile quirks his lips. "I may be a god," he agrees, "but even I make mistakes."

"What mistakes?" she whispers, dread sinking its claws into her bones as her ears register the wariness in his tone. Loki glances away to look around, and when he turns back to her, there was something in his eyes that looks too much like trust.

"My magic is instinctive, it always has been," he shares. "As I've said before, magic is conducted through the soul, and every spell cast is made with _intention_. And when my future-self sent Lady Anna back…" Loki shakes his head. "He used most of his magic to power the spell that released me from Thanos's control. The last dregs of my soul were then used to send her here, and the spell..." His lips purse briefly. "Let's just say that it takes a great amount of power to cast it."

Natasha stares at him, shocked at the subtext she was getting. Because if she wasn't interpreting it wrong, then Loki— "You died."

"For a…good cause," he says with another bitter smile. "And for revenge," he adds, looking down at the table, and Natasha had to push away the emotional aspect of it before her sympathy could overwhelm her logical side. "I received the...the  _backlash_  of the spell, if you will, and realized what my future-self intended. He… _I_ ," he amends, "sent Lady Anna here to die.

"But I had forgotten, I think—or perhaps I simply ignored it in favor of pursuing vengeance for myself," he tacks on thoughtfully, "—that our bargain would cause a bit of my magic to linger inside her body, to ensure that Lady Anna lived to complete her task. My magic is instinctive," he repeats, "and it must have adapted to the dangers Lady Anna faced when Thanos possessed her. I believe this is why Thanos couldn't overcome her will, no matter how hard he tried to break her. My magic must've protected her from death until she used Yggdrasil to ensure Thanos's demise."

It—all of the things he'd just shared with her—should've set her on edge. Loki trusting someone? Please. And with so much detail, too.

But despite the logical step she  _should_  take, her gut tells her that Loki was honestly extending one tiny leaf off an olive branch to her, that he was just as wary about her as she was him.

Why, though? Why was he doing this? Telling her all these things? Why share it—share, because he didn't exactly ask for anything back, did he?—with her? Why her? What was the point?

…of course.

Natasha internalizes her doubts and nods, taking it all in and realizing that Loki did indeed have a point he wanted to make. "And?" she prompts when he kept staring at the tabletop.

Loki looks back at her again. "It still has not come back."

She shakes her head. "What does that mean?" she asks, trying to think about it rationally. "Is that why someone took her body—to get at your magic?"

"Hela needs no more of my magic," Loki says with a sad, rueful smile. "And my relationship with her is quite positive."

"Hela," Natasha echoes, searching through the myths and legends she had poured over while she and Banner had been heading to the Helicarrier almost a week ago. "She's your daughter, yes?"

He tilts his head and shrugs lightly. "Of sorts," he replies. "So again, she needs not Lady Anna's body to harvest my magic. No," he adds, "I believe that Hela has done something much unprecedented—thus the reason why it took me a while to think it."

"What?" she prompts.

Loki looks straight at her and doesn't stutter at all. "I think Hela brought Lady Anna back to life."

* * * * *

With the portal closed far earlier than Fate had scheduled, the destruction surrounding Manhattan wasn't as grave as it had been the first time around. Anna couldn't help but be pleased, and she revels in the sounds of happiness around her as she lounges back in her tree branch, the homemade telescope she'd built late last night held to her dominant eye. It's a little pervy of her, but she couldn't resist seeing her family together one last time.

Her father and uncles—with the exception of Uncle Rhodey—are all there, along with Loki, the old man she realizes is Aunt Jane's mentor Dr. Selvig, a wheel-chair-bound Agent Phil Coulson, and a seemingly inseparable Natasha Romanoff and Clint Barton. Anna couldn't help but smile bitterly at the sight of them standing so closely together.

Thor and Loki shook hands with everyone, the latter even dropping a kiss on the Black Widow's knuckles before shaking hands with Clint and Dr. Selvig. This time around, Loki isn't the enemy, and he looks pleased to be welcomed in the little group. He would make a great unc—

Her happy mood turns sour as she remembers what she'd given up to secure this future.

Technically, she  _is_  his niece, Thor's adopted daughter and a duchess of Asgard. It had already happened to her, and Odin had never bothered to revoke her titles, which were apparently tied into her soul if her interaction with Hela was anything to go by.

But this time around, it was never going to happen again, because she never going to exist again.

Movement draws her attention back, and she sees Thor and Loki grab the handles of the elaborate container holding the Tesseract. Standing in the middle of the circle drawn on the ground, Loki turns the handle he was holding to activate the Tesseract's power. Currents of white-blue light engulfed them before blasting up into the sky, and another second later, they were gone—blue lights and all—leaving five disguised superheroes, a recovering S.H.I.E.L.D. agent and an aging astrophysicist standing around the circle, looking up at the sky.

That's about the only time she notices that her nicely-dressed father was wearing white-bottomed sneakers, and the surprise that sneaks up on her at the sight of his outfit has her snorting a laugh.

"Anya." Startled, Anna looks down to see the face of her assigned keeper. "Stane just accepted your invitation to dinner," he tells her, giving the phone in his hand a pointed wiggle.

A smug smile curls her lips upward. "Let's head back then," she says to him as she tucks her small telescope into her pocket and leans back to fall off the branch. She lands on her feet with enough flourish to draw several  _oohs_  and  _ahhs_  from the children nearby, and Anna waves at them with a bright smile before looking towards her friend. "Shall we?" she asks playfully, taking the leather jacket he offers to her and leading the way to the curb where her new bike was parked. "There's still much I need to do before dinnertime comes."

He frowns. "Are you sure you want to associate yourself with such a man?" he eventually asks her, his tone full of worry.

Anna glances back at him as she straightens the jacket over her frame. "Vanya, are you worried about lil ol' me?" she asks fondly, pulling her sunglasses from the V of her shirt.

"Yes," he answers bluntly. "Anushka, make no mistake, I don't doubt that you have a plan, but the people you've been approaching…" He shakes his head slightly. "I'm not sure you realize how dangerous they all truly are. Even a man such as Ezekiel Stane."

Another bitter smile crosses her lips as her mind brings up unwanted memories of the Black Room and the too-sweaty hands that came from the darkness.

_"Happy sixteenth birthday, Miss Stark. Let me give you your present, hm?"_

She hikes a leg over her bike. "Trust me, Ivan," she says as she slips her sunglasses on and looks up at him, "I know  _exactly_  what that man is capable of."

Ivan grabs her arm before she can wheel off, cutting her dramatic exit short. "You have faced him before. Is it revenge you seek, then?"

"Partly," she replies, impulsively reaching out to smooth her thumb over his jaw. Ivan stiffens, but didn't pull away. "But don't worry, Mister Peterson. I know better than to let him know I'm his enemy."

Ivan looks even less pleased now that she'd clued him in to her intentions. "This is a dangerous game you're playing, Miss Volkova," he warns her, releasing her elbow. "I'd thank you to take great care on how you proceed. Your life isn't the only thing you risk should you lose."

Anna glares at him and purses her lips, feeling anger sizzle under her skin. "I know what I stand to lose, Mister Peterson," she says coolly. "And I'm not playing _games_ ," she adds, almost sneering as she places her hand back on the bike handle. "I'm winning a war."

* * * * *

Tony couldn't contain his grin as he slid into the car with Bruce. No, he wasn't pleased at the fact that he was about to drive the big guy to the airport, but at the knowledge that Bruce had agreed to keep in touch and let Tony know where he was disappearing off to next. Not even S.H.I.E.L.D. had managed to extract that promise from him, but that wasn't surprising. Bruce clearly adores Tony.

And so does Hulk.

"Mwahahahaha."

"… _what_  was  _that?"_ Bruce asks, eyebrows raised high.

Tony clears his throat. "Nothing," he answers in as innocent a tone as possible.

"I knew it," Bruce says dryly with a slight groan. "I got into a car with a madman. You probably drive like one too."

"I resent that," he replies, flooring the pedal and zooming off, earning a loud curse from Bruce as he grips his seat tightly. Another evil cackle escapes Tony, and Bruce starts laughing as well.

"You're insane," he declares as Tony eases up on the gas and turns to follow the street.

"Jury's out," Tony grins. "So," he adds as he flips on the radio, "you like hip-hop? No? RnB? Oh no, don't tell me you're a jazz fan." He misses whatever Bruce says next though, his attention caught on a seemingly arguing handsome couple. He particularly eyes the slim brunette straddling a sleek unmarked black motorcycle, because while she's straightened and added some extensions to her hair and exchanged the stolen uniform for a casual getup of Chucks, jeans, white T-shirt and black leather jacket, there's still no mistaking the pretty face hiding behind a pair of generic Ray Bans.

Anna Thorsdóttir.

She was speaking to a new pal of hers—a man with graying hair and a good-looking face—with a wry expression that contrasted against the man's grim countenance, which was emphasized by the grip he had on her elbow. When Anna moves her hand to brush her thumb over his cheek, Tony commits the guy's face and her motorcycle's plate number to memory, vowing to have Jarvis run scans when he got home.

It was about time he had a chat with their mysterious time-traveler, face-to-face.

Tony turns his attention back to the radio and cranks up the volume when the first strings of  _Shoot To Thrill_ began blasting obnoxiously through his customized speakers. At that, Bruce shoots him a look filled with such resignation and exasperation that Tony can't help but give his best smile. "AC/DC it is."

And then he steps on the gas and peels out of the park.

* * * * *

THE END.

...for now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Anya/Anushka/Ms. Volkova** : Anna's new alias. (Anya and Anushka are two of several traditional Russian nicknames for 'Anna.')
> 
>  **Ivan/Mr. Peterson** : Anna's new ally. I won't tell you who he is for now, but if you're really curious, you can always translate his last name to Russian and run a Google search.
> 
>  **Ezekiel Stane** : Anna's new/old enemy. I won't tell you who he is either, but feel free to run a Google search on him too. :)
> 
> …and yes, I'm going to make a sequel. This is too fun to drop anymore.
> 
>  **And why did I put Natasha's POV** , you ask? Why not Loki, since he, Tony and Anna are our biggest players? Well, spoilers here, but our Agent Romanoff is joining the Big Three (no, not Zeus, Poseidon and Hades) as a major character in the new Avengers timeline I have going on here. Why? Well, all the clues are in her POV.
> 
> This chapter also holds a lot of plotlines that will be explored in the sequel, so if you think you can spot them—they're in all three POVs, btw—then go ahead.
> 
> Oh, and tell me what you find—I wanna know if I gave you enough clues. Guess, my darlings. Guess. ;)
> 
> Thank you so much for reading part 1 of the Time-Traveler Arc.  
> ~E


End file.
